Strawberry
by Grimrose Eilwynn
Summary: Fem Ichigo story. Eventual IchigoxToshiro, IchigoxByakuya. Being rewritten. See the story "Strawberry Remix" on my author's profile!
1. Controlling Butterflies

**Chapter One: Controlling Butterflies**

 _2:32 AM, Friday_

 _Karakura District, Tokyo_

The slim pale ghost of a woman floated in the black starless sky over the distantly sparkling city, the inky dark hair around her head iridescent in the moonlight, mingling with the night around her. Her cheekbones were starved icebergs, her eyes pools of liquid plum; she was exceedingly small, impeccably graceful, deceptively delicate. Black swallowtail butterflies fluttered around her. They had their job, and they did it with precision. She could admire that. They were much simpler than conscious souls.

The woman wore traditional black robes with a white under-robe, and a katana sword sheathed at her hip. She had a map in front of her, was perusing it. A little furrow formed between her eyebrows, the only sign of tension.

She had a mission, but this sector of it seemed... _odd._

It was awash with spirit energy. Yet there were no unusual alerts in the system. No Hollow gatherings, no massacres. Nothing to cause as much concentrated energy as this. Perhaps the info was coming in late? Either way, she had to investigate. It was her duty - well, one of them, anyway.

The oddest thing about the spirit energy was that it all seemed to center around one source. A source she couldn't immediately identify, because the energy was spread so far out around its point of origin, but still. One source.

What could possibly create anything that _big_?

* * *

 ** _Strawberry_**

* * *

 _7:30 PM, Friday_

 _Karakura District, Tokyo_

A sigh. "Boys, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

The skateboarders messing around in the alleyway all whirled around to look. A teenage girl was standing there. She'd come so silently, in the darkness, that she seemed to have simply appeared there, like some sort of spirit. She was leaning against the alley wall, her arms crossed, emphasizing her ample bosom - a nice term for giant boobs.

One of the skateboarders leered. "Hey, baby, how you doin'?" The five thugs started coming toward her, cat-calling. A lesser teenage girl might have been afraid.

Kurosaki Ichigo rolled her eyes.

She knew what it was, she'd expected it, but it was still annoying. "Ichigo" meant "strawberry." Cute name, right? Like those stupid little strawberry shortcake dolls. But Ichigo was no cute, stupid little girl. She had long legs, big thighs, wide hips, a big juicy ass, and very large, full breasts. A lot of it was muscle, too - she'd just come from karate and kendo club meetings, in both of which she was of the highest rank there was, and she had a wooden sword crossed onto her back behind her. She wore a tight little high school uniform that did nothing but emphasize her body, and had messy run-your-fingers-through-it fiery-colored hair that made people think she was a _Yankee_ , a female gangster, tied up behind her head in a bone and fang hair clip. She wore flame-red lipstick, a peppery, orange blossomy perfume called Black Opium, and dangling wood-cut earrings. Her converse shoes had NORMAL IS BORING printed across them in big block letters. Warm amber brown eyes peered out from her face like two crescent moons. Warm like the shade of her skin.

Here was the thing. Ichigo knew she was sexy. See, people believed sex was a physical thing; sex wasn't a purely physical thing. If a girl was to be sexy, she had to be sexy everywhere. For Ichigo, it was holistic. There was her exotic appearance, her deep sultry voice, her love of bluesy and punk rocker girls, her delight over horror movies, the way she dumped hot sauce all over her food, her loves of classical dog-eared old books and dark chocolate, and the fact that she was in a college-level poetry course despite the fact that she was only fifteen. There was the way she liked to dress up as a Goth Lolita in the Harajuku district. There was her deadpan sense of humor, and the whimsical crystals she held up on strings in her bedroom and from her book bag. There was her interest in politics and philosophy. There were her moments of angst, her moments of sensitive romance, her moments of self loathing and vulnerability, but the fact that they were usually hidden behind a veneer of toughness. It made guys feel protective. That wasn't something she tried for; it was just something she achieved. Then there was the fact that Katy Perry, bold and crazy and fearlessly sexual, was her guilty secret love. There were her perfect grades, her good-girl reserve mixed with her bad-girl self confidence and her delinquent appearance. The fact that her Dad was a doctor who thought she was his perfect little girl. The fact that she _wasn't_ his perfect little girl. The fact that she could kick the ass of pretty much every guy she'd ever met. She was even thinking of getting a tattoo, just to complete the picture. She was a wet dream. Guys liked her. She got that.

Then they got to know her.

"Look, assholes," she said bluntly, slinging down her bookbag. "I'm going to try doing this the easy way first. A little girl was shot here last week, in case you didn't know. And that?" She pointed at a vase full of white lilies, smashed over on its side, broken petals scattered everywhere, sagging sadly in the puddle of water muddied brown with debris from the street. "That's my offering to her that you smashed into and ruined with your skateboards. You need to get out of here. Show some respect."

The vase wasn't the only thing they had done. A thin layer of filth and grime, old cigarette butts and broken beer bottles, now coated the road of the alleyway, the little girl's final resting place, and graffiti had been splashed onto the walls, not the wondrous kind of artistic graffiti, but the angular kind that displayed bad words and stupid messages, offending Tokyo's very reputation as one of the cleanest cities in the world. Not that Ichigo cared much about Tokyo's reputation. But she did care about people littering needlessly and disrespecting the dead. Both actions, in her opinion, deserved a special level of Hell.

The skateboarders laughed. Not a good sign for their future physical health. "Why, is she gonna come back and _haunt_ us?" Snickering.

"Idiots," said Ichigo flatly. "She's hanging right above you."

"Huh?" They looked up - saw nothing - and that afforded her the opportunity she needed. She leaped upward, bending her legs in a midair split, and kicked two in the face; they went down in showers of blood with broken noses. She landed deftly, swept one's feet, and elbowed him in the face on the way down. She pulled out her sheathed wooden sword and hit one over the head with the handle, sinking the other end into the gut of the one behind her.

And then she was standing there calmly, surrounded by five downed, groaning thugs. She put her sword at her back again.

Then all of a sudden, Ichigo looked up - and smiled angelically. She reached out and put her arms around something - and a little girl appeared there in her embrace. A staring little girl, pigtailed, with one big eye and one empty eye socket, blood running down the side of her face, a hole through her head. A metal chain hung from her chest. She floated there, staring at them, glowing faintly in the dim yellow streetlight from the streetlamp in front of the corner store one block down.

It was the dead little girl, the skateboarders realized.

Ichigo put her chin on the transparent girl's shoulder, tilted her head, gave a slow, eerie smile. "I think we can get you to leave us alone now," she said sweetly. "Don't you?"

One guy actually pissed himself.

"Shit, shit, shit!" they hissed, staggering to their feet, stumbling out of the alley. "We're sorry, we're sorry!" With shrieks and calls, they fled. Skateboards lay overturned in their wake, the last sign of them.

Once they were gone, Ichigo dropped her arms and snickered. It never got old, scaring the shit out of normal people. "Well," she commented to the little girl, hand on her hip, "I don't think _they'll_ be back anytime soon."

Oh yeah, a tiny little detail you should probably know about Kurosaki Ichigo: she could see and contact dead people.

"Thank you for getting rid of them," said the ghost of the little girl, bowing slightly.

"Eh." Ichigo waved her hand and looked away, hard to read. "You asked for help, so I helped you. There's nothing to it. D'you need anything else?"

"No. I can rest peacefully now," said the little girl with a small, glowing smile. "Now that they're gone."

"Good, good. I'll bring fresh flowers soon, clean this place up for you," said Ichigo, moving to get her bookbag and leave. "See you soon, okay?" She began walking out of the alleyway.

"Nee-san?" Ichigo looked around. The little girl had taken to calling her 'Big Sister.' "If I had grown up to be a woman," said the little girl, smiling, "I'd want to be like you."

Ichigo tried to smile, but her eyes were sad. "Don't say that," she said.

Ichigo was not a good role model for any young girl. Ichigo was a frigid bitch, hard to put up with, probably destined to end up alone. But it was more than that. Ichigo held a very dark secret, the guilt of which she carried with her always.

Kurosaki Ichigo had killed her mother.

* * *

She made the walk back home in the darkness, stopping in front of the rectangular white building with big windows whose sign read _Kurosaki Clinic._ Her Dad worked from home; he was a doctor. His clinic was popular around the district, because he'd do things for cheaper money than any of the large hospitals would. He couldn't do major surgery or permanent in-patient care; his was more of an in-and-out hospital: blood tests, diagnoses and prescriptions for illnesses, that sort of thing. He was a good doctor, she'd give him that, and a loyal doting family man, even if he was kind of a spazzy dork in every other part of his life. The hospital was devoted to the bottom and front part of the two-story house. The home got the rest.

Ichigo had always wondered if maybe she and her little sisters could see ghosts because they'd grown up in a place that had the power to regulate life and death. The evidence was that Dad couldn't see dead people. Perhaps you had to grow up in that kind of environment, in order to truly see. Ichigo had certainly seen her fair share of dead people. Helping her Dad with simple nursing duties in the clinic, watching the light leave someone's eyes had become normal. Shit happened. Car accidents. Heart attacks. That sort of thing. Shit happened.

Death happened.

She walked around the back of the house, slipped off her shoes, took off her wooden sword, and headed through the back door into the kitchen and living room area. "I'm home," she announced, walking inside, once more taking it all in: In the living room, the sofa and large-screen television, the countless little closets and drawers that could pull out because Japanese houses were built compact with lots of extra spaces built-in, the wood and white, the neutrals, the homely curtains, the wooden floorboards, the high-piled rugs, the simplicity chosen specifically because it was the only design they all found relaxing and could agree on. In the kitchen, Ichigo's space, the round wood kitchen table surrounded by Western-style chairs and the surrounding countertop, stove, oven, and cupboards, the large window with airy window treatments across the room letting in light onto the space during the day, the soft woods and greens and coastal colors, the marble countertop decorated with a fresh bowl of fruit and vegetables, the oversized wrought iron pendant lights, the exposed ceiling beams, the mosaic tiles, the countless curves, the jar of olives next to countless jars of spices by the sink.

No one in the house was surprised by the late hour. Ichigo got home late every night - and immediately afterward, she always went to the kitchen to make dinner. The Kurosaki family had no mother - Kurosaki Masaki had died years ago, and had left no ghostly presence behind, only a memorial shrine that Dad talked to faithfully every day - and so Ichigo, the eldest child and daughter, had taken over the motherly duties for her household. She cooked dinner every night, made breakfast and _bento_ lunches every morning, and on weekends she cleaned the house and did the laundry. All her family had to do was clean up the kitchen for her every evening, and make their beds every morning - she'd assigned them the chores herself.

As she threw her book bag down and moved into the kitchen to make dinner - tonight she was thinking miso soup, rice, grilled fish, wild grass salad, and boiled carrots - her family greeted her homecoming.

"Nee-chan!" said Yuzu enthusiastically, as Karin perked up. There was the 'Big Sister' again, said in the same admiring tones, yet again from two more little girls.

"Sweet daughter of mine, you come home later and grow farther from me every day!" her father cried dramatically - he was a big, black-haired, bearded man, barrel-chested, with a booming voice and a penchant for humorous insanity. He charged toward her, his arms open. "Come, be embraced against your father's manly chest -!"

Ichigo flatly put out a hand to stop her father before he could crush her into one of his suffocating embraces. "Dad, you're being weird again. If you ruin dinner and I have to start from scratch, you're not getting any," she said. "And I'm not growing away from you, Dad. I'm just busy."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Yuzu, one of the almost-middle-school-aged fraternal twins, who had a bob of cinnamon brown hair and a sweet smile. "You've had less time for us since you started high school, too, Nee-chan."

"We're all agreed! We should stage an Ichigo intervention! There should be cake!" Dad announced.

"No cake. No intervention. _Busy_." She glared slightly for effect.

Dad was unfazed. "This house is not a democracy!"

"It sure as hell is. Do you even know how to cook and clean for yourself? What if I staged a protest and stopped doing anything, huh? What then?" Ichigo put a hand on her hip, annoyed.

"Dad, stop pissing off Ichigo, I don't want to have to do my own laundry!" Karin, the other fraternal twin, with black hair and sharp sarcastic features, exclaimed.

"My own daughters turning against me," said Dad, wounded, flinching away as if struck. He was kidding. Dad was always kidding. "It must be puberty!"

"Dad, as evidenced by how you handled my first period, you know _nothing_ about female puberty," said Ichigo, chopping up ingredients. The twins giggled.

"I told you that you weren't dying!" Dad protested.

"Yeah, Dad. Spectacular parenting moment. Now go sit over there and wait for dinner to be done." Ichigo glared and pointed.

It was all for show. Ichigo would die before she admitted it to her father, but when she looked at her list of qualities she wanted in a man, a lot of them reminded her of him. It was somewhat horrifying and super embarrassing; not something she tried for, but something she'd achieved nonetheless. Her ideal man:

\- had a good sense of humor

\- was much more relaxed and laidback than she was

\- was a bit of a bad boy (as her father had, by her mother's admission, been when he was younger)

\- was a comfortably masculine man

\- could be a bit of a showoff, was much more extroverted than she was, could brighten her whole day

Maybe it wasn't the healthiest list in the world, but whenever she met a new boy, she went through the list in her head to see if he met all of her criteria. No one had made the whole list yet, and so she had dated no one. Love didn't factor into the equation for her - she didn't think she was the type to do something as inconvenient as fall in love. No, for her, finding a proper mate was a mental exercise, and so far no one had made the cut. Ichigo thought her list sounded more like a wild American country boy than a traditional Japanese man, which could be part of her problem. Her rationale was that she could be the serious one in the relationship - be the tough, self-confident, internationally traveling breadwinner businesswoman. And if that businesswoman also wrote her man romantic poetry on the side, that was nobody's business but theirs.

She had her favorite lyrics about men from individual songs, of course, as most secretly romantic music lovers did:

From Elle King's "Make You Smile":

 _Your eyes look mighty fine, I really think I'm losin'._

…

 _You taste like sugar mints and cigarettes and beer._

 _I used to hate this town but I'll stay because you're here._

And then all of Lana del Rey's "Video Games":

 _Swinging in the backyard_

 _Pull up in your fast car, whistling my name_

 _Open up a beer_

 _And you say get over here and play a video game_

 _I'm in his favorite sun dress_

 _Watching me get undressed, take that body downtown_

 _I say you the bestest_

 _Lean in for a big kiss, put his favorite perfume on_

 _Go play your video game_

 _It's you, it's you, it's all for you_

 _Everything I do_

 _I tell you all the time_

 _Heaven is a place on earth with you_

 _Tell me all the things you want to do_

 _I heard that you like the bad girls, honey, is that true?_

 _It's better than I ever even knew_

 _They say that the world was built for two_

 _Only worth living if somebody is loving you_

 _Baby, now you do_

 _Singing in the old bars_

 _Swinging with the old stars_

 _Living for the fame_

 _Kissing in the blue dark_

 _Playing pool and wild darts_

 _Video games_

 _He holds me in his big arms_

 _Drunk and I am seeing stars_

 _This is all I think of_

 _Watching all our friends fall_

 _In and out of Old Paul's_

 _This is my idea of fun_

 _Playing video games_

 _It's you, it's you, it's all for you_

 _Everything I do_

 _I tell you all the time_

 _Heaven is a place on earth with you_

 _Tell me all the things you want to do_

 _I heard that you like the bad girls, honey, is that true?_

 _It's better than I ever even knew_

 _They say that the world was built for two_

 _Only worth living if somebody is loving you_

 _Baby, now you do_

And then there was Taylor Swift's "Last Kiss":

 _I do remember the swing of your step_

 _The life of the party, you're showing off again_

 _And I roll my eyes and then_

 _You pull me in_

 _I'm not much for dancing_

 _But for you, I did_

 _Because I love your handshake, meeting my father_

 _I love how you walk with your hands in your pockets_

 _How you'd kiss me when I was in the middle of sayin' somethin'_

 _There's not a day I don't miss those rude interruptions_

 _And I'll go sit on the floor_

 _Wearing your clothes_

 _All that I know is_

 _I don't know how to be something you miss_

As she'd said, secret romantic. So sue her.

Sometimes she despaired of _ever_ finding someone. You know, of finding someone who both interested her _and_ would put up with her.

"Can I help you?" Ichigo looked around in surprise to find Karin standing there. She had her hair carefully curled by hand and up in a clip like Ichigo's, and even had the same eschewing of normality printed in block letters onto her sneakers. Karin really admired Ichigo - wanted to be just like her. It made Ichigo uncomfortable, because on one hand she did truly try to take care of her sisters and be a female presence for them, the kind of female presence she hadn't had when she was a preteen. (Ichigo's best friend Tatsuki's Mom had had to teach her about tampons.) She'd taught her sisters basic self defense, helped them with their homework, told them about being a woman, that kind of thing. But on the other hand, Ichigo didn't think of herself as a particularly good role model, or as a naturally heroic person - she was too cold and clinical, somewhat bizarre, hopelessly rebellious, essentially selfish and not good in the whole golden-shining-armor spotlight. The last time she'd tried to be the heroine, all it had done was kill her Mom. Ichigo wanted more than that for her sisters.

So she tried to encourage individual traits in Karin, like her caustic sense of humor, her friendships with several boys, and her love of soccer. Same with Yuzu's emotional freeness and artistic obsessions with dressing up and making dolls.

"Sure," she said, moving aside so Karin could join her. "Finish chopping up the carrots, okay? Be sure to curl your fingers so the ends don't get cut." She justified it to herself by saying Karin _should_ know how to cook.

Yuzu said idly from the table, "Nee-chan, you have a new 'friend' haunting you."

Ichigo turned around to find the ghost of an older man in a suit and tie with greying hair and square glasses floating there. The same chain hung from his chest. A red stain was just above it.

"Were you shot?" was the first thing Ichigo asked bluntly.

"Ooh, sounds juicy already!" said Yuzu enthusiastically.

"Damn, I wish I could see as well as you," Karin muttered. All Karin and Yuzu saw and heard when a ghost appeared were a blur and a faint buzzing sound, like that of a fly. They couldn't even make out distinct words.

For Ichigo, the only differences between the living and the dead were the purposeful ones.

"A - a business partner shot me. I got involved with the yakuza," the businessman admitted. To his credit, he looked ashamed of himself. The yakuza were some of the most terrifying gangsters in the world. "The - the other ghosts said you could help me."

Ichigo blew out a breath, pushing strands of copper hair idly back behind her ears as she thought. "Yeah, I have a reputation for helping out the dead around here," she said slowly. More and more of them had been coming to her lately, actually. Said she _had a good feel to her._ Whatever that meant. "As far as I know, I'm the only one who can 'see' this well. So what does an immoral businessman want with me?"

"All - all ghosts disappear after a while. Some never form in the first place," said the man. "Where do those… souls... go?" The question was tentative. "I - I mean - is there a Hell?"

"You want to know if you're going to Hell," Ichigo realized, frowning.

The businessman swallowed, nodded.

"I'm sorry," said Ichigo at last. What else was there to say? "I don't know what happens to the souls that disappear. You want my opinion? I think we all just go back into the earth. You know, that our energy is absorbed into the fold. I don't think I believe there's anything after this, myself. I guess some people just absorb quicker than others."

Like Mom. Ichigo hadn't been sure how to feel about that. One part grief, one part relief. She'd been dreading having to face her Mom, knowing her actions were what had gotten her mother killed. But Mom never appeared. Ichigo had felt relief.

That was what she meant about being a terrible person.

No one knew outside her family; it was their guilty little secret, and Ichigo kept it that way. She was pretty sure that deep down, at least her father resented her, that her mother _would_ resent her if she were still around, and she knew that she resented herself. She hoped her mother was at peace.

"So - oblivion?" the businessman was pondering.

"Oblivion," Ichigo agreed, nodding calmly. She'd come to terms with the idea long ago, and it no longer really frightened her. It just gave her more incentive to live her life as fully as she could while she still had the chance. In the immortal words of Elle King, _"I'm gonna live my life like it's the last damn night, 'cause when the clock strikes twelve, we're all gonna go to Hell."_ Ichigo was certain of herself.

She didn't think Death had anything left to show her.

* * *

After dinner, which was of course drizzled liberally in hot sauce and accompanied by warm family around-the-table talking, joking, and chatting - the Kurosakis were nothing if not lively, rife with arguments, challenges, shouts, jokes, funny phrases, and occasionally actions that could qualify as minor intrafamilial violence - after all this, she headed up to her bedroom with a cup of soothing herbal tea. Shut the door so that the "15" pendant hanging on its front rattled. ("Ichigo" could also mean "fifteen" - literally, "one" and "five", "ichi" and "go.")

Ichigo's bedroom was white, painted in swirling geometric black designs. Crystals hung from little strings on the ceiling. Colorful origami cranes were set in corners. Paper lanterns hung from the edges of the ceiling, mingling with Christmas lights. Pieces of charcoal art hung on the walls. Any wallspace not taken up by art was taken up by wall to wall shelves of books, music, and movies - most of them Western.

Ichigo was fascinated by Western culture, and was considering some sort of future career involving international travel. Her shelves were a mass of different mediums: Stephen King sat next to Elle King, horror video games sat next to Gin Wigmore, urban exploration videos sat next to ZZ Ward, and Paramore had a whole shelf just to itself. So did Shakespeare. So did Jane Austen. So did Edgar Allan Poe. Then there were the Bronte sisters, and countless books of poetry, philosophy, and politics. Manga volumes and American comics were there as well: Kurosaki Ichigo, Professional Comic Book Nerd. _iZombie_ had a place on her shelves, as did _You, Me, and the Apocalypse; Pushing Up Daisies;_ and _The Walking Dead._ Her favorite horror movie was _The Others_ with Nicole Kidman, which could not be explained without giving away the ending, though she did have a certain aesthetic appreciation for goth movies like _Only Lovers Left Alive_ and _Crimson Peak. Welcome to Night Vale_ was her favorite series of podcasts, and was similarly inexplicable, but basically combined sci-fi, horror, and small-town narratives. Amy Winehouse had some space on her shelves, as did Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey. (Ichigo had a thing for women and suicidal death.) Adele and Chantal Claret both had a home with her. Her sometimes music - music she wouldn't always admit she liked and had to be in the mood for - was 5 Seconds of Summer, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift. Because come on. What girl did not at least secretly like Taylor Swift?

"Good Girls" was her all-time favorite 5 Seconds of Summer song; "Dark Horse" her favorite Katy Perry song; then there were "Video Games" and "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey, along with "This Is What Makes Us Girls", which was a great social commentary; "Daydreaming" by Paramore; "Real Girls" and "Bite Your Tongue" by Chantal Claret; and her all-time favorite slower, softer love songs were "Last Kiss" by Taylor Swift, "Hello" by Adele, "Wonder" by Lauren Aquilina, and "The Only Exception" by Paramore, while her favorite happier, bouncier love songs were "Honey Honey" by Chantal Claret, and "Stay Stay Stay" and "Mine" by Taylor Swift.

Taped to the back of her bedroom door was the poem "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou (who, like Adele, was a goddess):

 _Pretty women wonder where my secret lies._

 _I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size_

 _But when I start to tell them,_

 _They think I'm telling lies._

 _I say,_

 _It's in the reach of my arms,_

 _The span of my hips,_

 _The stride of my step,_

 _The curl of my lips._

 _I'm a woman_

 _Phenomenally._

 _Phenomenal woman,_

 _That's me._

 _I walk into a room_

 _Just as cool as you please,_

 _And to a man,_

 _The fellows stand or_

 _Fall down on their knees._

 _Then they swarm around me,_

 _A hive of honey bees._

 _I say,_

 _It's the fire in my eyes,_

 _And the flash of my teeth,_

 _The swing in my waist,_

 _And the joy in my feet._

 _I'm a woman_

 _Phenomenally._

 _Phenomenal woman,_

 _That's me._

 _Men themselves have wondered_

 _What they see in me._

 _They try so much_

 _But they can't touch_

 _My inner mystery._

 _When I try to show them,_

 _They say they still can't see._

 _I say,_

 _It's in the arch of my back,_

 _The sun of my smile,_

 _The ride of my breasts,_

 _The grace of my style._

 _I'm a woman_

 _Phenomenally._

 _Phenomenal woman,_

 _That's me._

 _Now you understand_

 _Just why my head's not bowed._

 _I don't shout or jump about_

 _Or have to talk real loud._

 _When you see me passing,_

 _It ought to make you proud._

 _I say,_

 _It's in the click of my heels,_

 _The bend of my hair,_

 _the palm of my hand,_

 _The need for my care._

' _Cause I'm a woman_

 _Phenomenally._

 _Phenomenal woman,_

 _That's me._

She had a dresser stuffed with clothes, its top littered with makeup bottles and brushes and perfumes, beside her bed. A black parasol for her Goth Lolita look was tilted beside one end of the dresser, a guitar leaned up against the other end (her friend Yasutora "Chad" Sado, a big half-Mexican guy who had a tattoo and was in a rock band, had taught her a lot about music), and a bunch of shoes were piled in front of it. (She had a closet, but it was another storage space in the house, filled with extra blankets, linens, sheets, and towels.) Her bed was covered with a checkered flannel quilt, the warm sheets flecked with crumbs and entirely cozy, the pillows extra-fluffed. A vast desk across the room held all her electronic equipment - iPhone, laptop, Kindle, iPad, iPod - along with highlighting pens and countless little post-it notes scribbled on in large letters. A collage of photographs of herself with her friends and family was taped to the wall above the desk. Jogging clothes hung over the back of the comfy desk chair - she often went on solitary runs in the mornings, before coming back to make green tea and breakfast (usually fermented soybeans, toast with marmalade, and fruit). A tall body length desk light, its stem-like stand looping in fantastic swirl patterns, hung above the desk, currently unused.

Another poem was taped above her desk, to remind her of school and what it was like. This was the poem, by Bob Hicok:

 _After working sixty hours again for what reason_

 _The best job I had was moving a stone_

 _from one side of the road to the other._

 _This required a permit which required_

 _a bribe. The bribe took all my salary._

 _Yet because I hadn't finished the job_

 _I had no salary, and to pay the bribe_

 _I took a job moving the stone_

 _the other way. Because the official_

 _wanted his bribe, he gave me a permit_

 _for the second job. When I pointed out_

 _that the work would be best completed_

 _if I did nothing, he complimented_

 _my brain and wrote a letter_

 _to my employer suggesting promotion_

 _on stationery bearing the wings_

 _of a raptor spread in flight_

 _over a mountain smaller than the bird._

 _My boss, fearing my intelligence,_

 _paid me to sleep on the sofa_

 _and take lunch with the official_

 _who required a bribe to keep anything_

 _from being done. When I told my parents,_

 _they wrote my brother to come home_

 _from university to be slapped_

 _on the back of the head. Dutifully,_

 _he arrived and bowed to receive_

 _his instruction, at which point_

 _sense entered his body and he asked_

 _what I could do by way of a job._

 _I pointed out there were stones_

 _everywhere trying not to move,_

 _all it took was a little gumption_

 _to be the man who didn't move them._

 _It was harder to explain the intricacies_

 _of not obtaining a permit to not_

 _do this. Just yesterday he got up_

 _at dawn and shaved, as if the lack_

 _of hair on his face has anything_

 _to do with the appearance of food_

 _on an empty table._

Basically, the poem was about bureaucracy - how it worked and how it didn't work. She thought this particular poem would continue to be useful throughout most of her natural life. It was also a little like _Welcome to Night Vale_ in its utter absurdity and comprehensible incomprehensibility.

A contradiction. Ichigo liked contradictions, especially dangerous ones. She was one herself.

Ichigo curled up on her bed and started her homework, opening up her laptop and putting on some Netflix in the background while she studied. This time the show was _Pushing Up Daisies_ \- her favorite feel-good TV show. Which, admittedly, was about a boy who could bring dead people back to life with a touch, then kill them again with another, and the dead girl he'd brought back to life that he'd fallen in love with and _couldn't_ touch. But still. There was humor. And lots of cute little moments. And interesting lead female characters. And the boy was a pie-maker. That alone should count for something.

Mmm. Pie.

About halfway through her homework, Ichigo was distracted by something. This something took the form of a black swallowtail butterfly fluttering past her head.

She looked up in bewilderment. "What the actual fuck…?" Her _window_ was closed.

And then a girl floated through her bedroom wall after the butterfly.

Ichigo's first thought? _Oh, great, another ghost who wants help._ Her second thought? _Wait, no fucking way, that is_ _not_ _a ghost._

There was no chain hanging from this girl's chest. There was no obvious evidence of death - not even something subtle, like old age or chemotherapy. She wasn't transparent. And she was dressed funny - all decked out in black samurai gear edged in white, the kind that hadn't been seen since the feudal age of the Daimyo centuries ago. And she had a sword. Not a fake wooden one, but like an actual metal sword. Those were illegal, by the way.

So maybe she was some dangerous, delusional living-world freak.

But then, how could she float and move through walls? And… control butterflies?

And if she _was_ simply a ghost… shouldn't she have passed on already? Her clothes said she should have.

Up until this point, Ichigo had been completely frozen, staring at the girl. The girl's sandals, arching around single-toed _tabi_ socks, had landed on the floor and the girl was now looking around herself intently, as if searching for something. "It's close," Ichigo heard her murmur. She was pale and dark-haired, with violet eyes, and she was tiny bordering on anorexic. Like, it looked like she could use some food. Seriously.

 _Getting ahead of yourself there, Ichigo. Do not just feed the girl with the sword who can move through walls._

"Hey," she called to the girl, clearing her throat, "um, I can see you." To be fair, Ichigo was used to weird things happening around her. This was just another one. But the girl ignored her, still staring around her bedroom. Maybe she was deaf?

So Ichigo walked up to the girl, bent down to her level, and said loudly right into her face, "ARE YOU DEAF? I CAN SEE YOU."

And the black-robed girl nearly had a goddamn heart attack.

"M… me? You can see… me?" she asked dumbly, her eyes wide.

Ichigo smirked and flicked her in the forehead. "Uh - _yeah._ Surprise? Aww. Did the poor little dead girl think she was invisible?"

The girl scowled, flushing, her eyes narrowing. "You arrogant little fool -!"

"Who did you think I was talking to, anyway?" Ichigo asked curiously, straightening, hands on her hips.

"I… I thought you were an undiagnosed schizophrenic," said the girl, feigning dignity.

"Funny. That's what I thought _you_ were."

The girl became indignant. "I am not an undiagnosed schizophrenic! I am a noble member of the house of Kuchiki!"

"See, the problem is, that's exactly what an undiagnosed schizophrenic would say. And this noble house of Kuchiki? Never heard of it." Ichigo smirked as the girl swelled, reddening. So she was easy to rile up.

How fun.

"So what exactly are you, anyway?" Ichigo added curiously. "And why are you here? Look, no offense, but I don't exactly like my private space being invaded." The Kuchiki girl grew more serious, nodding in response to her point.

"There is a reason why I was so surprised you could see me. Even humans with abnormal spiritual powers usually cannot see me. I am on a higher level than what you would call a _ghost._

"I am a Shinigami."

Shinigami. _God of Death._

* * *

There was a point beyond anger, beyond reason, when the emptiness just gnawed at you. The hunger. Always the hunger for _more_.

The Hollow feasted into the dead girl's corpse, sinking his nose and teeth into her skin, blood, muscle, bone. He sucked away at more and more of that delicious, electric energy. Two souls so far had been killed and eaten, were being absorbed, but the ghost of the old man with the glasses was long gone. This girl was his current meal. There was only one problem.

These souls were appetizers. It was like giving a starving man a cracker. They just didn't have enough _energy._ This soul was just like the last. This ghost girl, with her pigtails, she was not who he was looking for. This ghost had touched who he was looking for. But she was not it.

He lifted his head and sniffed the air.

"It's near," he whispered in realization. "All that spirit energy. It's right nearby."

And then the Hollow was gone. A monster had come, a monster had killed, a monster had left.

Countless humans passed by, laughing in the late-night brightly-lit streets, unnoticing.

* * *

Ichigo decided to entertain this girl's idea. If it _was_ true, she did not know as much as she'd thought she had about death, and this needed to be rectified immediately. If it _wasn't_ true… well, she was curious to see just how elaborate this delusion was.

"You're a Shinigami," she said skeptically. "So… I've always been curious… when they're not out reaping souls… what do Shinigami _do_ , exactly?" Shinigami were like the Japanese version of the West's Grim Reaper. Supposedly, they came for dead souls. In living world culture, no matter what they were called, they were frightening emblems of death itself, always black-cloaked, eerie beings, silent as the graves they haunted. Seeing one only meant one thing - that your life was over. So the idea of one lazing on a beach with some suntan lotion was hilarious.

Kuchiki blinked, surprised by the question. "Well, it depends on the Shinigami," she said uncertainly. "I, for example, like drawing. And classical music. I enjoy climbing to high places, such as in rock and tree climbing. And I like bunnies."

"You like bunnies?"

"They're cute!" said Kuchiki defensively.

"Hey, I'm not judging. Do you have a _pet_ bunny?"

"Sadly… no. I do not think my older brother would take kindly to the suggestion. It would be below my station." Kuchiki looked a bit despondent at this. "He is the head of the family. He must care about these things."

"You should get one anyway."

"Clearly, you have never met my brother."

"I'd get one anyway."

"I'm sure you would," said Kuchiki dryly. And to a certain extent, she meant it. "Now -"

"Wait. I have more questions."

Kuchiki seemed impatient, but she said, "Okay. Fire away."

"What do Shinigami do on the job? And where do they live?" Ichigo asked intently.

"Shinigami have two principal duties," explained Kuchiki. "To destroy evil soul monsters called Hollows - which humans also cannot see - and to help Plus souls, what you call ghosts, pass on to the next life, with a ritual called _Konso_. The next life is where we live. It is called the Soul Society."

"Do all dead souls become… Plus souls? How do you destroy Hollows? What happens to souls who die in the Soul Society?"

"Only the Plus souls with a tie to the living world become ghosts. Our job is to break their tie to the living world. We destroy Hollows with our _zanpakutoh_ ," she indicated to her sword, "and with special spells called _kido_ \- high level incantations only a Shinigami can cast."

"What can the spells do?"

"Bind, attack, shield and defend, and heal. And as for souls who die in the Soul Society… well, first, aging is slowed down in the Soul Society. Ten years for every one of yours. And only souls with spirit energy even need food. But once a soul does die in the Soul Society, it is reincarnated in the land of the living."

"Do you have to have spirit energy to be a Shinigami?"

"Yes. We are usually recruited from the masses, though the Soul Society born nobility are born to spirit energy naturally."

"Are all souls born in Soul Society considered nobility?"

"No. You have to be of an established noble family with spiritual presence," said Kuchiki firmly.

"And how do you Shinigami decide who destroys what Hollows, or sends on what Plus souls?"

"We each have missions, are assigned sectors to guard for a certain period of time - in Soul Society and in the living world both, because Hollows attack Soul Society too. They live in the space between realms, a desert place called Hueco Mundo."

"Why are Hollows so evil?"

"They have a constant emptiness inside them. They eat souls to feed this emptiness."

So like vampires. "If a Hollow is destroyed, are the souls it ate released?"

"Into the Soul Society, yes. Very good," said Kuchiki, pleased.

"What is the Soul Society like?" Ichigo asked hungrily.

"It is a very good place. The commoner's grounds are a series of small villages. You would call them old fashioned… as I've said, we age much slower there." That explained the bizarre clothing. "Then there is a vast city in the center where the nobles and Shinigami live. The Soul Society is ruled by a council called Central 46, which regulates Shinigami and provisional spirit law. The Soul Society is much slower paced, full of nature and usually very peaceful. Ten to one it's better than the living world," said Kuchiki proudly.

"So… the Soul Society seems to have taken on Eastern culture… does that harken back to Ancient China being one of the oldest and first complex living world civilizations? Like, was there a war that decided this, Mayans vs Chinese, or…?" Ichigo was curious.

Kuchiki looked completely bewildered, like she had no idea what Ichigo meant. "What is… _China_?"

"It's… the country… near… this one?" Ichigo was now the one who was confused.

"Oh, you mean Region 45! The big one!" said Kuchiki brightly.

"Yeah, you know what? Never mind," Ichigo decided. "Next question. How do you get all those people from all those different countries to come together at once?"

"Well, it helps that all languages become one language in the Soul Society," Kuchiki explained. "Everyone thinks everyone else is speaking their language."

"Is there a Hell?" Ichigo asked next.

"Yes. Evil souls are sent there."

"How do you define evil?"

"Evil is one who has done dark things. Such as murder, or rape."

"And what was that black butterfly?"

"That was a Hell butterfly. Not actually related to Hell, funny enough. They relay messages, guide Plus souls on to the Soul Society - they do all sorts of useful things on command."

"So why haven't I ever seen a Shinigami or a Hollow before, then?" Ichigo challenged. Everything else fit. The souls never appearing. The souls disappearing.

"As I said, you have to be of a certain spiritual energy level to see us. Your powers have grown as you've gotten older, yes?"

"... Yeah," Ichigo admitted at last, thoughtfully. "They have."

"Exactly," said Kuchiki neatly, pleased. "That would explain it."

"So you're on a mission now? This is your sector?"

"Correct. I was searching for a source of huge spiritual presence, and then I was distracted by a Hollow alert, so I was chasing down the Hollow and then when I entered this room - which is very close to the spiritual presence - the Hollow suddenly went off my sensing radar. It's very peculiar. Like some force is obstructing my senses. That's why I'm in your room."

"And I can see you because I have the power that makes dead people Shinigami?"

"Yes, quite a lot of it. I have never even heard of a human who can see Shinigami before."

"So that could be why more and more ghosts keep finding me as I get older and older."

"Yes, it's probably a growth spurt of your spirit energy."

"Okay… prove it to me," said Ichigo firmly, crossing her arms.

Kuchiki seemed caught off guard. "... What?"

"If you have all these amazing powers… Show me some." This would be the deciding factor for Ichigo. She didn't believe in what she couldn't experience. She wasn't one of those 'blind faith' sorts of people. Con artists, fake psychics, magic, and stupid reality TV shows were not her forte, and neither, really, was religion.

"You see that I am different, yet you do not believe in me?" Kuchiki asked, both disbelieving and scathing.

"I want proof," Ichigo repeated stubbornly, lifting her chin defiantly.

Kuchiki's eyes narrowed. Then she suddenly unsheathed her sword, reached out, and made a little slice in Ichigo's arm. Ichigo winced, there was a moment of pain - "How can you do that?" she asked wonderingly. "Plus souls can't touch living things."

"Do you ever stop asking questions?" Kuchiki asked in amusement. ("No," said Ichigo.) "It's all about how much spirit energy you have. The more you have, the more you can affect the living world around you. Now shush and watch me work."

Then Kuchiki put her hand over the cut in a flash of electric blue and the cut was miraculously gone. Just like that - _zip._ As if it had never been. Ichigo stared.

For the first time, Kuchiki smiled. "You see? Healing kido. A normal Plus spirit couldn't do that. Kido is one of my favorite parts of being a Shinigami."

The moment of peace was interrupted by a sudden roar. A horrible, piercing, screaming howl of pain met Ichigo's ears, and she looked up, her face white.

"What is it?" Kuchiki tensed, half-standing, suddenly serious, immediately going for her zanpakutoh.

"Can you hear that?" Ichigo's voice was shaking, and she hated it. "That horrible, piercing howl? It's coming from outside."

Kuchiki paused, listening. "I hear nothi -" she began. And then she heard it. The howling cry of a Hollow.

"That's it!" she hissed, whirling in that direction. "That's the Hollow!" But her mind was full of confusion. It was like she was hearing the howl through some unseen filter. She couldn't feel the Hollow's presence at all. And how could… how could some mere human have heard the howl before she herself sensed it?

Then there was a crash that shook the floor below, and a high-pitched female scream. The Hollow was attacking this house.

"That was Yuzu!" Kuchiki heard from behind her, and then the human girl had rushed past her down the stairs and into the living room. Cursing, Kuchiki ran after her. The minute the human girl had left, the force obstructing Kuchiki's senses had dropped, like a stopper being pulled out of a bottle of wine, and the Hollow's spirit energy had hit her in full force.

Kuchiki Rukia had just realized what was going on.

And if she was right, that human girl was in much more danger than her family.

* * *

Ichigo jumped the stairs two at a time, leaped onto the landing, hurtled into the living room and kitchen. A wide hole had been made in the wall to the outside, and a great monster was hunched there. Far from looking like a vampire, it was a huge, hunching, hulking beast with big hands and long, grabbing fingers, made of colors black, white, and grey. Its face was indeed spirit-like, in the _yokai_ monster sense, a white mask covered in black markings with leering skull teeth. Behind the eyeholes in the mask, there was nothing - nothing but a faint, terrifying light of sentience - a mask with no person behind it.

Ichigo stood frozen in fear for a moment, and then it lashed out at her father. His back exploded in a shower of blood and he fell, his face pale and uncomprehending - Karin and Yuzu screamed - the monster went for them - and fury blocked out Ichigo's terror. She sprinted forward and pushed her sisters out of the way just in time, felt the Hollow's fingers close around her instead. She was lifted out of the house and up high above the street, her feet dangling.

"Nee-chan!" Yuzu and Karin shouted in fear. Ichigo wasn't sure they could even see what was attacking them.

"Let me go, you stupid, fish-faced freak!" she shouted, kicking ineffectively at the Hollow's hand. Then it opened its mouth to swallow her whole - she saw its teeth, the darkness of its throat, felt its putrid blood-stained breath - she froze in fear - _"Karin, Yuzu, run!"_ she screamed, unable to look away - her last act, she thought -

And then her eyes were covered by the _shink_ of a sword and a flash of black cloth.

Kuchiki had knocked out her screaming little sisters and now leaped forward, cutting off the Hollow's arm holding Ichigo and grabbing Ichigo by the collar as she fell. She set her gently down on the ground, stood in front of her with her sword raised, as the Hollow retreated, writhing and howling in pain.

"Now I understand," said Kuchiki softly.

"What do you mean?" Ichigo asked, shaken, lying there behind her.

"The Hollow attacked your father, but did not immediately kill him or go to eat him. Why?"

Ichigo paused. That was actually a damn good question. If Hollows attacked people to eat their souls… why hadn't the Hollow eaten her Dad before turning to her and her sisters? Why hadn't she watched her own father be devoured? "I don't know," she admitted.

"Because it was looking for something else. Or rather, some _one_ else. Hollows will eat all souls, that is true, but they prefer souls with high spirit energy. When possible, they always attack prey opportunistically, prey that will be as filling and juicy as possible.

"Prey like you.

"You, human girl, have more spiritual power than anyone else I have ever heard of. You, as a living human, can see and touch Shinigami and Hollows. And I have realized - the spiritual presence I was sensing was _you._ You were the source, your bedroom was. Your spiritual presence spreads out so far around you, I felt it from all the way on the other side of your district. The closer I got into the thick of it, the center of the cloud of spirit energy, the harder it was to sense anything. But the minute you moved away from me even a little bit, I could sense better again. And you, you heard the Hollow before me. Because your power, which was blocking me out, gave even your untrained soul better ears than I have.

"The thing obstructing my senses was _you_.

"And, most likely, the Hollow is attacking your home, and the people you know, because it is looking for you. It is attacking people you touch, people you leave your soul's signature on. You have become so strong that Hollows not even in your area are instinctively seeking you out. You leave such a strong trace that they can sense you even in the people who are not you."

Ichigo paused. "... And this will continue happening?" she asked quietly. "More Hollows will come, and they will continue attacking the ones I love, as long as I am around?"

Kuchiki winced. "... Yes," she admitted.

And then Kuchiki Rukia felt a blow to the back of her head and she was knocked out. She realized too late that she had begun trusting this human girl who would risk her life pushing her sisters out of the way of harm, who would ask such intelligent, thoughtful questions about a world she had never even heard of before. Trust.

A dangerous thing for a Shinigami.

* * *

Ichigo knew what she had to do. It was the most cliched line in all of action history, but in this case it was true. She was about to fix this problem. And what she was about to do, no one else could do, or _would_ do, except her.

She looked fondly once more on her home, her unconscious sisters, her bleeding father who Kuchiki had said was not dead, even at Kuchiki herself. She gave one thought to her friends at school, another thought to her friends in karate and kendo clubs with Tatsuki, another to her friends in book club with Ryou, another to her friends in Gay-Straight Alliance and Feminist Club with Chizuru, and another to her friends in the Harajuku district. They were all in danger. But she could save them - save them from herself.

If Ichigo had her way, no one had to die tonight except her.

There was no hope for her. She was as good as dead. She had no Shinigami powers, and supposedly nothing else worked against a Hollow. So the Hollows would continue stalking her, hunting her down through her friends and family, until one finally killed her. She could not count on the Shinigami to always be around.

So, she thought, take out the middle man. Just let it kill her before it killed anyone she cared about.

But she wasn't stupid. If she stayed here and let it eat her, it would just eat Kuchiki and her family afterward. Hollows were plagued by constant emptiness, right? But if she led it to an abandoned place far away and _then_ let it eat her… then supposedly it would go after anyone equally.

But just in case, she should probably try to kill it.

And she kind of liked that idea. That she could die killing it. Maybe she could even be released into the Soul Society that way, and release other souls besides herself. And if she thought that through her actions she was atoning for that one horrible thing she had done to her mother - well, no one had to know that except herself.

Of course, she faced the possibility that she would wound it and not kill it. In that case, until the Hollow was destroyed by a Shinigami like Kuchiki, she faced dark oblivion. But oblivion was what she'd always planned for anyway. So death at the hands of the Hollow didn't bother her as much as it might have other people, though she wasn't looking forward to the pain.

So she ran into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and then ran outside to stand in front of the Hollow in a strong wide-legged stance. Her face was hard, her eyes stony pieces of flint, fiery and determined.

"Hey, asshole!" she shouted to the Hollow. "You want my soul?!" The Hollow, which had recovered at least somewhat by this point - its arm was regrowing - snarled, roaring. She raised her arms. "Then come and get it!"

And she turned and ran.

The Hollow followed her.

Ichigo was a good runner. She'd always prided herself on that. She could sprint, and tonight, being chased, she sprinted faster than she ever had before. There was a fleeting kind of triumph, she thought, to the way she always ran just that much faster than the snarling Hollow - though maybe that was just the adrenaline talking. She ran through darkened streets, passed by houses standing in rows on either side of her like silent sentinels, until she finally made it into an empty black park near an abandoned housing unit. Skeletal tree branches lifted long tendrils up to the sky as if in a kind of prayer, the leaves obscured by darkness. She stopped in a space between two trees. Turned around.

She got into a stance and held the knife before her, scowling firmly. And she waited. Unable to speak, breathing hard.

The Hollow paused. Then charged toward her, howling.

She looked into the teeth, felt the putrid breath once more, and tried to position the knife so that it would go right for the Hollow's center. This thought grounded her. Distracted her from her overriding fear.

Ichigo, for the second time that night, was prepared to die.

* * *

Kuchiki woke up, her head pounding, only to find the human girl and the Hollow gone. Gasping and cursing, she looked up and around wildly - she was still alive by a dead person's standards, still a Shinigami, and the human girl was running away, the Hollow following her, a knife glinting in her hand.

That idiot.

An honor sacrifice.

Kuchiki jumped to her feet and ran after the Hollow and the girl. She arrived just in time to see the Hollow snarl and fly at the girl, who had stilled, the glinting moonlit knife in her hand poised at the readiness -

And Kuchiki Rukia also ran faster than she ever had in her life. And for a Shinigami, that was saying something.

Because for a moment, she was there in the forest again, watching Shiba Kaien-dono die at the hands of the Hollow; for a moment, she was there at the house again, dumping his dead body on his horrified sister Shiba Kuukaku's doorstep; Kuukaku… who looked just like this random human girl.

Kuchiki Rukia couldn't save Kaien-dono, but perhaps, for a moment, wildly, she thought she could atone by saving his family.

* * *

And for the second time, Ichigo's vision was covered in the _shink_ of a sword and a flash of black cloth.

Kuchiki had run in front of her and taken the attack for her. The Hollow's teeth crunched around her small frame, her sword poking out through the top of its mouth in a glint of silver. It wasn't dead, but it was severely wounded. It spat her out like a bad piece of meat and retreated again, writhing and howling in pain.

"You… _idiot_ …" Kuchiki panted from the ground, bleeding everywhere, her face deathly white and her lips blue.

"I was doing the only intelligent thing!" said Ichigo fiercely. "Damnit, Shinigami girl! You should've let me die!"

"You wanted to save your family and friends."

" _Yes_." Duh.

"There is one other way you could do that." Kuchiki was speaking quickly now.

"And that is?"

"You could become a Shinigami."

It took a while, for the words to hit her. "But I'm not dead," Ichigo pointed out at last uncertainly.

"If I pierce the tip of my zanpakutoh through your heart, I can temporarily gift some of my powers to you," said Kuchiki seriously from the ground. "I am too badly injured to fight it myself, but _you_ …" She sounded hopeful. Then she winced. "There is a high probability it will work, since you have so much spirit energy, but if it doesn't you will die. But there is no other way. No time to ponder it. Make your decision now."

Ichigo paused. "So let me get this straight," she said. "I could either face oblivion at the mouth of a Hollow, let a bunch of my friends and family get killed and _then_ face oblivion at the mouth of a Hollow… or I could take the option where I either save everybody or get sent to the Soul Society?" Ichigo grinned viciously. "And you call that a _choice_? Hell yeah I'm taking option three!"

Kuchiki smiled, warm respect filling her.

"Give me the zanpakutoh, Shinigami girl." Ichigo reached out her hand. "We'll try your plan."

"Not 'Shinigami girl'," said Kuchiki quietly. "My name is Kuchiki Rukia. _Rukia._ You can call me by my given name." For a noble, this was an important admittance - even for one as unconventional as Rukia was.

The human girl smiled. "Kurosaki Ichigo," she said in return. "And you can call me Ichigo. Let's hope this isn't the last meeting for either of us, yeah?"

The Hollow had recovered again, was coming after them.

"Are you ready?" said Rukia solemnly from the ground, pointing the sword at Ichigo's heart.

Ichigo swallowed, nodded. Her palms were sweaty, her heart pumped. Somehow, the leadup was more awful than the idea itself. "Yes," she said.

And then the sword plunged through her heart and Ichigo felt a flash of electric energy inside her. It touched off some sort of spark, like her heart was made of wood, and then in a great explosion she felt something inside of her jump on top of Rukia's sword - pin it down - suck up more and more of that addictive energy even as the sword struggled - it felt so good she couldn't have stopped if she'd wanted to -

And then, in a vicious and unrefined burst, her power plunged over the barriers of her body and leaped into the ether, where her soul shifted, changed, reformed.

After that, everything was different. Irrevocable, though only Rukia knew it.

* * *

Rukia knelt in the cold night air, shivering, only her white under-robe and her wounds left on her. She was now no more than a simple dead soul, no longer a Shinigami. She'd planned only to offer Ichigo half her powers. She had not counted on Ichigo's soul being that powerful and unaccountably vicious. _All_ of her power was now gone.

Just what _was_ that girl? Where did the power inside her come from?

Rukia was left strangely shaken.

Ichigo's body was unconscious beside her, but her soul had reformed in front of the Hollow. The transfer had worked. And supposedly, Ichigo could now travel to and from her living body as a Shinigami, unfettered.

Watching the new Shinigami form, she saw Ichigo's eyes come back into focus, saw the power fade from her expression, saw that reassuring consciousness return. The same warm consciousness that had grinned and agreed to do something that might kill her just for the chance to save everybody.

Rukia definitely preferred _that_ Ichigo over whatever horrible spirit was trapped inside her.

Ichigo looked good as a Shinigami, she had to admit. The black robes flowed around her curves, the hair pinned up at the back of her head with the bone and fang hairclip suited her new look, her earrings and makeup and perfume were still deadly and pristine, and sheathed at her back was a massive sword, larger than any Rukia had ever seen. The unformed sword, the _asauchi_ , changed according to the power of its wielder. Never had Rukia seen one become so large on an untrained rookie.

Ichigo's increased confidence could also be seen. A deadly calm had come over her face.

Then in a burst of newly controlled speed she'd unsheathed her sword and flown at the Hollow, and began a wild, graceful, elegant dance around its blows. Never once was she hit. She'd been trained. She was _good_. It was mesmerizing to watch.

And then, in a few neat sword strokes, she had cut her zanpakutoh through the Hollow's limbs and then through its head and the Hollow disintegrated into thin air with one last screech as the souls inside it were freed.

Rukia stared in silent amazement as Ichigo turned to look at her… Then Ichigo's eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed into unconsciousness.

" _Ichigo!"_ Rukia did not even recognize the horrified, fearful scream that issued from her lips. It was unbefitting of both a noble and a Shinigami. But Rukia was no longer technically either, and anyway, in her defense, it had been a weird night.

She crawled in pain over to Ichigo's Shinigami form, crying out the girl's name pitifully, unable to do anything else -

"Relax. Her soul's just adjusting to its new form. It's a natural process."

Rukia froze at the new voice - the new voice that could apparently hear hers. She whirled around to look.

A man was standing there, and he had a body but somehow she sensed great spirit energy inside him. He was looking right at her, his smile whimsical but his eyes cold and clinical. He had stubble around his chin, longish unkempt blond hair, wore a boat hat and clogs, had a long coat and carried a cane.

"Wh-who are you?" She tried to sound confident. Instead of helpless. Which she was.

"Urahara Kisuke, at your service." He tipped his hat politely.

Rukia felt fear clog her throat. Urahara Kisuke was a traitor, a former Captain-class Shinigami, exiled from the Soul Society for illegal experiments on other souls in the name of spirit energy research. That body must be his own creation. That cane must be his zanpakutoh. They never did manage to take it from him.

"S-stay back!" She began pulling herself backward along the ground. "Traitor!"

"Relax, relax." Urahara put up a hand. "Now I'm just a lowly underground Shinigami equipment black market salesman who happens to reside nearby."

Rukia's eyes narrowed. _"Happens?"_

"Okay. So, I'm interested in the girl behind you. Have been for a while. And I'm willing to help you out."

"So you can get to her?" Rukia asked in a hard voice.

"In a way," said Urahara enigmatically. "If you find that hard to believe…" His smile became icy. "Just… call me bored."

What could Rukia do? She couldn't go back to the Soul Society like this.

She closed her eyes in defeat. "I accept," she finally whispered helplessly.

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_ In saying not all souls born in Soul Society are considered nobility, I think I'm veering from established canon just a bit. But really. If every family who had a child got to be a noble, you'd have people shitting out kids left and right. It would be, like, the exact opposite of what China's one-child policy was trying to do. It doesn't make any sense. _Everyone_ would be a noble.

Everything else is, as far as I know, Word of God canon.

I hope you don't mind me giving Ichigo such an interest in Western culture. That's fairly canonical as well. According to Word of God, canon Ichigo's favorite celebrities are Mike Ness and Al Pacino, and the person he most admires is William Shakespeare. He even calls Sado "Chad." Of course, it also helps if I know the music, movies, books, and TV interests I'm giving my character, haha.

Also, I'm just pretending this story exists in the modern day. That's what the manga and anime do.


	2. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

**Chapter Two: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't**

Skeletal hands were pulling Ichigo down into a pit of fire and brimstone. They were the hands of her dead family's corpses, reanimated, pulling her down into Hell along with them.

 _"We thought you would save us, Ichigo, we thought you were doing to save us…"_ they moaned over and over again, dragging her further and further even as she struggled.

"I did save you! I tried to!" Ichigo cried out, yanking at their hands. "I'm sorry, I thought I had, I -!" The dead had no patience with her excuses.

Then Rukia in Shinigami form, glowing white, appeared floating above her in the pit. "I am sorry," she said stonily, contemptuous. "You were too late."

"Too late?! Rukia, help me!" Ichigo cried out. But Rukia disappeared, and the light left the pit.

Still struggling, Ichigo looked around - and everyone's faces. Dad's, Karin's, Yuzu's. They all became Mom's face. Pale, staring, lifeless, glassy-eyed. Accusing.

 _"You didn't save us."_

Ichigo shrieked, sat up straight, and realized she was in bed.

"... Nightmare," she breathed, slumping and putting a hand over her chest, breathing hard. Her heart was pounding furiously. "Just a nightmare." She realized what had woken her up. Her phone alarm was going off on her desk across the bedroom, just like on any other normal morning. Faint sunlight streamed through the window.

Ichigo slid out of bed, put on her slippers (deep purple with furry little unicorn-horned creatures on them), stood. Mostly on autopilot. She was sleepy and shaken. She didn't remember going to bed last night, but somehow she was in bed, wearing one of her usual pajama sets: an ivory shirt-and-pants set with a business suit jacket like collar, a tucked in waist, and straight-leg pants. The pajamas had strawberries on them, and she'd drawn little X eyes onto each strawberry so that they all looked dead.

Ichigo went to turn off her alarm and wondered if the whole Shinigami mess had been some bizarre, fevered dream. Maybe she needed to lay off the spicy food before bed? But it was weird that she didn't remember pulling on her pajamas and putting everything away before going to sleep.

She put on her jogging clothes as usual, went downstairs through the empty, sleeping house as usual - Ichigo always got up earlier than everyone else - and stopped suddenly, her heart jolting. The hole was still there in the living room wall.

Frightened, she sprinted back up the stairs to her family's bedrooms. "Dad! Karin! Yuzu!" she called, banging doors open - and she found three soundly sleeping people who were quite annoyed at being woken up. They were all healed, sleepy, confused, and perfectly fine.

"Goddamn, what the hell's the matter?" Karin muttered, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"What was that?" Dad called down the hall.

"Nothing."

"You're - you're all okay." Ichigo paused, blinking stupidly.

"Yeah," said Dad, confused. "Why wouldn't we be?"

Dumbly, Ichigo pointed. "... There's a hole in the side of our house."

* * *

It turned out? Ichigo's family had _no_ memories of the night before. They asked the neighbors, who all confirmed that they'd seen a weaving, probably drunken truck driver plunge straight through the Kurosaki house last night.

It was so improbable, it would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. They all seemed so _convinced_. Did the Shinigami have a triage service?

Dad commented that it was a miracle - a truck crashed into their house and nobody got a scratch! Equally brightly, Yuzu commented that it was a double miracle - none of them had even woken up! Then Karin and Dad got into a typical argument.

"Some miracle," Karin muttered. "The jerk left us with the repair bills."

"It's okay!" said Dad enthusiastically. "He'll come back to apologize someday!"

"No. He won't."

"But maybe -!"

"He's not coming back to apologize, Dad. Hit and runs are illegal. He'd be arrested."

"But maybe he could brave infamy and -!"

"Are you even listening to yourself?"

"When did my adorable little girls get so pessimistic…?"

"You'll have to forgive her," said Yuzu understandingly. "It's early in the morning and _she's on her period_." She mock-whispered the last part, hand to her mouth.

Karin flushed and opened her mouth furiously to shout something, and Ichigo broke the whole thing up firmly. "Okay, okay, you three, let's not kill each other. Nobody's dying today. Karin and Yuzu start cleaning up the living room, Dad board up the hole in the wall, and I'll make breakfast. I guess we'll all have to arrive at school a little late today."

Ichigo figured her brief power trip must be over. Rukia must have taken her powers and gone back to that Soul Society place. Which still didn't fix one problem: more Hollows would be coming after Ichigo.

This troubled her for the rest of the morning.

* * *

 _10:43 AM, Saturday_

 _Karakura 1st High School_

It felt weird, not having Ichigo there, they were all agreed. She was the one who'd befriended Sado and given him the nickname "Chad", just before she and Chad befriended Keigo and Mizuiro. So that accounted for all the guys. She'd been Tatsuki's very first friend, and then she and Tatsuki had befriended Orihime together. She'd met Ryou through book club, who had introduced her to Michiru and Mahana. She'd met Chizuru through the Gay-Straight Alliance and the Feminist Club.

So basically, she'd been the first to bring in everyone in their group. Tatsuki was the one to observe it first - whenever their group made plans to do something, and then Ichigo said she couldn't come, the plans almost immediately fell through. Tatsuki was pretty sure Ichigo didn't even know she did it. There was just something about Ichigo's comfort with herself - something that appealed to lots of people in her friends circle. Funny thing was, most of their other classmates were afraid of her. Considered her icy and unreachable, even "scary." People sometimes shied away from her in the hallways.

But in her friends, there was only concern. It was close to the last bell before third period Contemporary Events with Ochi-sensei, and the question on everyone's minds this morning was: where was Kurosaki Ichigo? She _never_ missed school. She'd been voted "Most Likely to Become Your Terrifying Boss" in last year's middle school yearbook.

"I heard Ooshima finally got to her," Ryou, with long black hair hiding her face and even longer track legs, said darkly from behind her book.

"You mean, like he attacked her?!" Chizuru, cute and loud and bespectacled, squealed. Michiru, with short hair and countless stuffed animals and Hello Kitty keychains in and on her backpack, gasped and put a hand over her mouth. They all knew the class bully Ooshima's attention paid to Ichigo bordered on sexual harassment - especially considering she didn't _want_ his advances.

"No," Mahana, with wild curly hair and a messy open-buttoned uniform shirt, said eagerly, " _we mean she killed him_."

"So she's in jail?!"

"Totally in jail." Mahana and Ryou sat back, satisfied.

Orihime, curvy and round-faced with long caramel locks and childish star hair barrettes, turned immediately to Tatsuki. "Tatsuki-chan, we have to spring our friend from jail!" she said determinedly. Ichigo was the only other person who got this affectionate honorific from Orihime.

"Fine by me," said Tatsuki dryly, who had a messy black pixie cut and lean musculature and who didn't believe a word of it. "I'm game."

"You guys are all ridiculous," said Mizuiro, the baby-faced dark-haired prep. "I stopped by her house this morning. Some drunk truck driver rammed into it last night." He said this like it was somehow _better_ than Ichigo being in jail. Orihime, Chizuru, and Michiru disproved this theory by screaming.

"No, Ichigo, you're too young and hot to leave us!" cried Keigo, a complete perv with longish brown hair.

"Here, here!" Chizuru, lesbian to the end, added.

"Does she need help?" Chad, large and dark-skinned and stoically protective, asked quietly, tensing.

"Fuck all you guys!" said Tatsuki in alarm. "I've gotta ask the real question: _Is she dea_ -?!"

"Nope." A book bag hit Tatsuki gently in the back of the head, accompanied by a familiar and welcome voice. "Sorry to disappoint everyone. We all survived."

Ichigo was standing there in her uniform.

"Ooshima did try to grope my ass outside class just now, though," she added. "I think I might have broken his wrist this time. He loved every second of it." Her face was twisted in contempt. Ichigo found Ooshima disgusting, as, to be fair, she found most people she didn't like, hadn't gotten to know well, or considered stupid.

Several of Ichigo's friends flew at her at once, crying out in relief.

"OH, THANK GOD, MY FUTURE WIFE!" That was Chizuru.

"Ichigo-chan, you're moving in with me!" That was Orihime.

 _"I was just about to start crying!"_ That was Michiru.

 _"So was I! Let's cry together and then do it!"_ That was Keigo.

"Fuck off, asshole." Accompanied by the sounds of punching. That was Ryou and Tatsuki, defending their friend from Keigo.

"Fill us in on all the juicy details. I want gossip material, please." That was Mahana.

"Chad - go fetch." That was Mizuiro, the only one who had remained completely calm. Chad was so big he could walk over, pick a struggling Ichigo up from out of the pile of her friend's bodies, silently put her back down, and pat her shoulders neat.

"I'm glad you're okay," he said stoically. But the warmth to his brown eyes said he meant it.

Ichigo smiled, touched. "Thanks, Chad," she said.

"Does your family need help cleaning up your place?"

"Chad, you're so big, I think you would do more harm than good," Keigo pointed out jokingly.

"Don't even worry about it. The worst's taken care of." Ichigo waved a hand. None of her friends could tell whether or not the worst was _actually_ taken care of. Ichigo had a habit of understating these things.

Tatsuki's eyes had narrowed and she was about to press Ichigo for more information, but just then a voice spoke up from behind them - a new one.

Kuchiki Rukia had been puzzled by Karakura High School. It was all concrete - concrete courtyards, large concrete buildings, even concrete walls and tiled white floors. Only the shoe lockers were blue, and there were _hundreds_ of them. All the hallways looked the same, the classrooms differentiated only by the letters and numbers on their signs. 3-A was the first third year class, for example, and teachers moved in and out of that classroom all day.

But she'd finally found Ichigo's classroom - now _her_ classroom, she realized surreally - and after some hesitation, she approached Ichigo's intimidatingly large and rowdy friends group with a big smile firmly in place. " _Sonuva_ ," she began, because she'd read in a book once that this was a common living world term, "are you Kurosaki?"

Ichigo (and everyone else) looked around, and her eyes widened. Kuchiki Rukia was standing there, apparently in a body as everyone could see her, in a Karakura High School uniform. She gave a bright smile, looking alien.

"Nice to meet you!" she said.

"Oh, this is Kuchiki Rukia," said Mizuiro, who knew everything about everyone, in response to Ichigo's silent, caught-off-guard stare. "She started here yesterday. It's an unusual time to transfer, but her family had to move."

"Kurosaki-san, I don't have any textbooks yet," said Rukia sweetly. "Do you mind if I sit by you? The headmaster said you could share yours with me." She held out a hand. Written on it in pen was a single sentence: DON'T MAKE A SCENE.

Ichigo's face fell into expressionlessness. "Sure, Kuchiki-san," she said. "Let me show you around the school. Come with me." And she practically dragged Rukia out of the room.

Ichigo's friends were left mystified in her wake.

"She's showing the new girl around school?" Tatsuki asked. "That's… unusually friendly of her."

* * *

Ichigo turned to Rukia immediately in an empty courtyard.

"So - are we skipping school?" Rukia asked excitedly. "That's what kids do around here, right?"

"No - I mean - it depends on the kid - that's not the point, _look_ ," said Ichigo intently. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Rukia repeated, looking bewildered.

"Yes, what's wrong!" said Ichigo, exasperated, throwing up her hands. "Has the Soul Society sent you, do you need help with another Hollow, are you -?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. I haven't left yet," said Rukia.

Ichigo stared. "Why not?"

"Because you still have my powers," said Rukia slowly, like Ichigo was an idiot. Which was kind of how Ichigo suddenly felt.

"I - I thought my power trip was over," was all she could manage.

"What I offered you last night was not a one time thing," said Rukia, frowning. "I may not be able to go back to the Soul Society for _months_. You stole all my powers and it will take time for them to fade from your soul's body and for mine to recover. I can only do the most basic of _kido_ , and I currently have no other powers. Until they return, I have to rely on this gigai."

"Gigai?"

"A fake body Shinigami use in times of emergencies," said Rukia, business-like. "So they can disguise themselves as humans and avoid Hollows."

"How did you get one, though? What, did you have it stuffed up your butt?" said Ichigo. Rukia gave her a Look and she smirked.

"I… may have asked a shady third party with access to black market equipment… for help… using my emergency mission stipend," said Rukia, sounding highly embarrassed. "I - I can transfer the money from the same place I get Hollow alerts." She sheepishly held up a cell phone looking thing.

Ichigo freaked out. "What?! Isn't that dangerous?! Why didn't you ask the Soul Society for help?"

"I can't go to them with this."

"Why not -?"

"I just can't!" Rukia glared.

Ichigo raised her hands slowly. "Okay," she said. "Okay. So, they helped you put me back in my body and wipe the memories of my family and neighbors."

"We also cleaned up the blood," said Rukia matter-of-factly.

"Right. Thanks. Now, Rukia… I gotta ask…" Ichigo had a pained expression. " _Please_ tell me you're the one who redressed me in my pajamas."

Rukia, who had looked tense, suddenly seemed amused. "Yes, it was me," she said. "Me and Ururu. A little girl… robot, I suppose you would call her… who is part of Urahara's gang."

"Who's Urahara?"

"A greedy salesman with exorbitantly high prices," Rukia muttered.

"So… what's your plan from here? Where will you stay?" Ichigo asked. "Because, we have a spare room at my house. I can probably just tell my family and friends you're having family problems. My Dad'll be ecstatic to take you in, and my sisters won't complain."

Rukia seemed surprised, almost nervous. "Really? I was…" Now it sounded stupid. "I was kind of just going to camp out in your closet."

Ichigo smiled. "In that old thing? A pile of towels could fall on you and suffocate you at any minute. Just take the bedroom."

"Excellent," said Rukia briskly, recovering. "It'll be convenient for me to have you close at hand all the time in case a Hollow alert comes."

"Eh?" Ichigo looked bewildered.

"Ichigo, think about it logically," said Rukia slowly, her 'you're-stupid' expression once more firmly in place. "I don't have powers. I can't go back to the Soul Society. Who else is going to do Shinigami duties around Tokyo except you?"

Ichigo was thunderstruck. "But - but - but I don't know anything about being a Shinigami!"

"That's why you have _me_ ," said Rukia. The 'you're-stupid' expression hadn't left.

"No!"

"... What?" Now it was Rukia's turn to be flabbergasted. "Y-you can't refuse! This is your fault!"

"Screw you, I can totally refuse, and I am!" said Ichigo defiantly, in a rare burst of emotion.

"That's - that's totally selfish! Ichigo, someone has to save these people! You could be a hero, you could be -!"

 _"That's why I can't do it!"_ The words came out in a raw, savage cry before Ichigo could even stop them. Her eyes were squeezed shut, twisted with emotion. She opened them up, cocoa brown eyeliner squinted in pain.

"What do you mean?" Rukia asked, completely bewildered. "Ichigo, you were a hero last night! You saved your family -"

"That's - that's not - look. Rukia, you've known me for less than twenty-four hours. You don't know who I _am_. I'm - I'm a selfish bitch, people are terrified of me, everyone hates me! You have no idea how utterly unequipped I am for a job saving people." Ichigo was now speaking softly, her face unusually open. She looked tired. Very tired. Rukia knew what that kind of tired felt like, but she was over a century old and she had lost people very close to her. Many of them.

What kind of experience could make a fifteen-year-old human look that way?

The questions must have shown in Rukia's face, because Ichigo sighed, looking down. "I - I killed my mother." There was a stark silence in the courtyard. "I saw someone about to commit suicide. I was nine years old. I ran across a road full of cars trying to stop them from jumping. My Mom, who was walking me home, ran after me to try to pull me back from the line of speeding cars. She got hit. I didn't. Death on impact. I was there. I woke up to find her body shielding mine - in death, it had pushed me out of the way in time. Then she didn't become a ghost, and no one in my family ever saw her again.

"That's the last time I ever tried to be a hero for a stranger.

"I'm better selfish. I haven't fucked up since. When I stick to beating the shit out of the people who hurt me and my friends and family, I do just fine. And I'm happy you've given me the power to save my friends and family from future Hollows. But when it comes to saving other people, I -"

"You're scared," Rukia realized in a whisper. "You're actually scared to be self sacrificing."

Ichigo shrugged. She still wouldn't look Rukia in the eye. "Call it whatever you want," she said. "But I - I wish I was different - but I'm not - I've never been -" Now she wasn't even making any sense, and she knew it. "I'm not that girl," she finished, whispering softly. "That dark-haired girl who kicks ass in the name of defenseless strangers and gets the guy - I'm not that girl. I'm not even the golden-haired girl who swoons and faints a lot and needs saving by a handsome prince. I don't know what I am. I'm just - me," she finished lamely, shrugging again. "And - I-I don't think that's good enough for what you're asking me to do."

She finally looked up, staring Rukia in the eye. Vulnerable.

There was a song from this play called _Wicked_. It was a musical, but not that kind of musical. And there was this one song in it that Ichigo had always really related to:

 _Hands touch, eyes meet_

 _Sudden silence, sudden heat_

 _Hearts leap in a giddy whirl_

 _He could be that boy_

 _But I'm not that girl_

 _Don't dream too far_

 _Don't lose sight of who you are_

 _Don't remember that rush of joy_

 _He could be that boy_

 _I'm not that girl_

 _Ev'ry so often we long to steal_

 _To the land of what-might-have-been_

 _But that doesn't soften the ache we feel_

 _When reality sets back in_

 _Blithe smile, lithe limb_

 _She who's winsome, she wins him_

 _Gold hair with a gentle curl_

 _That's the girl he chose_

 _And Heaven knows_

 _I'm not that girl_

 _Don't wish, don't start_

 _Wishing only wounds the heart_

 _I wasn't born for the rose and the pearl_

 _There's a girl I know_

 _He loves her so_

 _I'm not that girl_

"I'm certain of my future," Ichigo said now. "And I don't get the guy, and I don't save the world. It's not that kind of future. In my future, I marry a drunken asshole because I have Daddy issues and become a bitchy CEO who knows five different languages. I never have kids. And I'm as happy as I could be under the circumstances. Shinigami? Hollows? Fighting? Death? Doesn't exactly factor into that future.

"I'm sorry," she added, for whatever it was worth. "I'm sorry that out of all the people in the world, you had to end up giving your powers to _me_. I'm not exactly the best vessel for them."

"But I'm not the first dead person you've helped, am I?" Rukia said suddenly.

Ichigo paused.

"I'm not," said Rukia, her eyes gleaming triumphantly. "You probably help ghosts all the time. So this future you're supposed to have? _You're_ not even following it."

She walked up to Ichigo and stopped, taking out a fingerless glove with a skull symbol on the front and putting it on.

"You mother's death was not your fault," she said bluntly. "It was the fault of the driver who didn't stop fast enough. But that's not even really the issue here. The issue here isn't even that you don't _want_ to be a hero - I think that deep down, you do. The issue, really, is that you don't think you're a hero, and I think you're wrong. Give me one chance to prove it to you."

Ichigo paused, and each girl gave the other a hard stare. Then - Ichigo wasn't even sure why she said it - but in the end, she supposed, her curiosity got the better of her. "Alright," she said. "One chance."

And Rukia slammed her gloved hand into Ichigo's body. Ichigo's soul pulsed once, and then she blacked out.

* * *

Ichigo opened her eyes to find herself lying on the ground. She sat up straight - and realized she was in her soul's Shinigami form. She stared at the unconscious body across from her. The unconscious body that looked just like her.

"That is me," she said matter-of-factly. "And that is creepy."

"You." Ichigo looked around to find Rukia standing above her, quite serious. "Follow me." And she started walking. After dragging her body over to a shady corner and sitting it upright, shutting its creepy blank eyes, Ichigo followed her.

Rukia led her to a children's park. There were lots of them in this general area - this was where most of the schools were in Karakura. This particular one was called Yumizawa, the biggest park in Karakura besides Karuizawa. It was named after some important person Ichigo had never bothered to remember. It was surrounded by tall trees, cradled by a bed of green grass, and it featured lots of colorful children's playground equipment.

And then they just stood there, watching the empty park (school was in session), saying nothing to each other, for a good twenty minutes.

At last, Ichigo said dryly, "Wow, Rukia. I can definitely understand why you brought me here. This will _definitely_ change my mind."

"Shut up, you jumped up little shit."

Ichigo snickered. "Got that from a book of living world vernacular, did you?"

"You'd better believe I did. Anyway, just wait. It won't be long now."

" _What_ won't be long?"

Rukia answered her question with a question. Her expression was veiled as she stared at the park. "Do ghosts come here often?"

"Well… actually, one does. He's about five years old. Pretty short. Likes to play in this park around noon. I think he died of leukemia. He stuck around because he wanted to be close to his family. Or that's what I've heard through the grapevine." Ghosts had those just like living people did.

"Is he a friend?"

"I've seen him around, but we've never really talked. Why all the questions?" Ichigo added curiously.

In silence, Rukia handed her the cell phone. It read:

 _Yumizawa Children's Park_

 _20M_

 _12:00 PM_

 _+-15MIN_

"This is one of your Hollow alerts," said Ichigo, tensing. "Within a twenty-meter radius of Yumizawa Children's Park, at noon, plus or minus fifteen minutes - a Hollow will appear."

"Spot on as usual, Ichigo," said Rukia calmly.

Ichigo's face twisted in fury. "So that's it?! You're just going to _force_ me to do the job -?!"

But just then, there was a scream. Ichigo whirled around to see the pale little ghost of the boy run out from behind the line of trees, crying and screaming, a huge Hollow chasing him. Easy prey. A small fry, but an easy meal. This Hollow looked different. It was colored the same, had the same mask face, but it looked a bit like a giant spider. It was gaining on the little boy easily.

Ichigo was on the playground fencing, her hand behind her for her zanpakutoh, before she could even think about what she was doing.

"Wait!"

Ichigo gritted her teeth and whirled around to Rukia. _"This had better damn well be vitally important to the moment at hand!"_ she hissed.

"I thought you didn't save strangers," said Rukia evenly. "I thought that was something heroes did."

Ichigo was incredulous "Well - but - But what do you expect me to do, just stand here and watch him die?! _I can't do that!"_

"Exactly," said Rukia. "You can't _not_ help people who are hurting. It's compulsive for you. And if you don't do my job, people all over your home will be hurting. You will be sacrificing them up because you feel like wallowing in self-pity instead of helping them. Do you want to be the cause of that?"

Ichigo paused.

Rukia was gaining steam. "When you refuse to do my job, Ichigo, you're not saying you're unwilling to save all souls equally. You're just saying you're only going to help the ones you're conveniently around for. And that's not fair. Is it?

"Look. What I'm saying is this: I know that you have to save people. I believe that you _want_ to save people. I even think you're willing to sacrifice yourself for them. And that's all that's required for a starting Shinigami - a dedication to duty. What, do you think all Shinigami are _saints_? Let me divest you of that illusion before it goes any farther. I'm not asking you to be perfect.

"I'm asking you to do what comes naturally, and save people like that little boy."

Ichigo looked around. Saw the little boy trip and fall. Saw the Hollow come for him… And, knowing she was proving Rukia right, she did what came naturally. She jumped in between the boy and the Hollow, and cut through the Hollow in one straight shot. It dissolved with a shriek.

An unseen tension had lifted from Rukia's face. "So, Ichigo. Do you see what I mean? Have you made your decision to be a Shinigami?"

"... Yeah," Ichigo admitted. "I have. In the end, I guess you pegged me - I hate seeing hurting people. But even more than that, I hate the idea of ignoring hurting people. So I guess I'll take the job. But I do have one point of contention."

"And that is?" Rukia raised an eyebrow.

"It's not duty that's driving me," said Ichigo sarcastically, turning around. "Wanting to help hurting people is called 'not being an ass'."

Rukia frowned. "Ichigo, duty is vital to being a Shinigami -"

"Yeah, bullshit," said Ichigo bluntly. "Duty is a stupid word for what you're told you're _supposed_ to do. No one would do anything as goddamn out of their mind as become a Shinigami over _duty_. Maybe they have noble family expectations. Maybe they want to move out of their villages and on to bigger and better things. Maybe they want to help people, like me. Maybe they want to feel important. Maybe they want to use the power trapped inside them. Maybe they just like the idea of beating the shit out of Hollows for a living, I don't know.

"But I do know for a fact that these non-saintly Shinigami do not do what they do out of duty. And neither will I. I'm doing it because I want to, not because I'm supposed to. Ya got that?"

"What about me?" Rukia challenged. "I am the perfect representation of duty. Where do I fit into your theory?"

"Oh, right, you and duty, of _course_." Ichigo gave a slow, cruelly amused smile.

"What is that supposed to mean?!" Rukia asked heatedly.

"Look at it from my perspective, Rukia. You took a near-fatal attack meant for a human and then gave your powers to that human - all for one measly soul you could have sent on to the Soul Society anyway. Right. That makes perfect sense from a Shinigami's perspective." Ichigo sneered.

Rukia's eyes widened.

"... Since you've been so honest with me about your mother, I'll be honest with you," she said at last. "I lost someone very close to me to a Hollow. I - I killed him - it was my fault he died. And you look just like his sister. I… I guess I was looking…"

"For atonement," Ichigo said in realization. Rukia looked up in surprise.

They stared at each other across the distance for a moment, a new understanding forming between them. Atonement - the one thing that had bound them together.

Then Ichigo closed the distance and stuck out her hand. "I'll help you with this Shinigami stuff until you get your powers back," she agreed. "But not because I'm supposed to. Because I _want_ to. And because you saved my life. Agreed?"

Rukia gave a small but sincere smile. "Very well," she said, taking the hand. "I look forward to watching your finest efforts."

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_ Things should start to diverge more from here. I just needed the basic setup before I got into the dicey stuff. I hope you all enjoyed the changes I _have_ made.

Please do review. I'm interested in your thoughts.


	3. First Things First

**Chapter Three: First Things First**

"Well, Rukia. This is my family. My Dad sometimes pins the gardener next door down with karate moves to prove he's 'still got it.' My sister Karin's dream is to find a career where she can kick guys in the balls for a living. And my sister Yuzu… well, Yuzu's the only normal one in the family. We're not sure what happened." Ichigo said it all so matter of factly, even as her family sent her death glares.

Rukia was standing on the Kurosaki doorstep with a small bundle of loose summer dresses, undergarments, hygiene items, and pajamas Ichigo had helped her buy just earlier today. Her uniforms were mixed in with the pile. She was a bit uncertain - this was her introduction into the Kurosaki family's household.

She shouldn't have worried.

"Rukia-chan, I heard you're going through so much trouble!" Yuzu took her hand, emotional. "Please, stay with us for as long as you need to!"

"Just don't expect any favors. I'm still kicking your ass at sports and video games," announced Karin, crossing her arms.

"Oh, thank you," said Rukia, looking away demurely, feigning tearful emotion. "I've been through so much, I just need -" But Isshin cut her off.

"I have already told Masaki's shrine that I now have four daughters!" Dad announced, and he charged at Rukia, his arms opened wide -

"Rukia, run!" Ichigo and her sisters called as one in alarm, but it was too late. Dad had crushed Rukia into one of his suffocating embraces.

"Be with me, my daughter!" he cried.

"Can't - breathe -" Rukia gasped out, her face purpling. She looked surprised and confused.

Ichigo put a hand over her eyes. Trust her father to humiliate her in front of her first Shinigami friend.

Karin freed Rukia by punching Isshin and telling him to stop being a perv. (His hand had been inching toward Rukia's breasts. He was shameless like that.)

"I love you too, my daughter Karin!" Isshin said brightly from the ground. "Nice right hook!" He gave her a thumbs up and Karin glared.

Life with the Kurosakis from there was very surreal for Rukia. First, they insisted that she decorate her room.

"But it's a spare room," said Rukia, surprised and confused. "I'm only here temporarily."

"She's so insecure!" their father cried. "Relax, daughter of mine! Come into your bedroom!"

"Yeah, this is _your_ room now," said Yuzu warmly.

"You can't not decorate your room," Ichigo agreed, arms crossed, and even Karin was nodding.

They bought Rukia an armload full of stuffed bunnies to sit on her bed, helped her paste her drawings up onto the walls, bought her drawing equipment, got her a music player and some classical instrumental music, and their father even put up a ladder by the bedroom window so Rukia could climb up to the roof whenever she wanted to. Ichigo framed two pictures for her - one of Rukia with Ichigo and her family, one of Rukia with Ichigo and her friends - and put them both by her bedside. And then, with her summer dresses hanging, drying, from the closet, it looked uncomfortably like this human room was hers.

Which would be useful for infiltration purposes. But it still made her uncomfortable. Part of her cried out at the inclusiveness of it all - Rukia had never been very good at making friends even in the Soul Society, with a few notable exceptions, and she had always been taught that it was demeaning to make friends with humans. Also, this couldn't last forever. One way or another, she would have to leave, and the thought of having a normal human bedroom instinctively made Rukia want to run away. But she couldn't run away, because Ichigo was still being trained as a Shinigami, needed her help, and had no other way to turn Shinigami besides Rukia's fingerless glove.

There was one night in particular. Rukia went to Ichigo's bedroom, almost ashamed, and returned the photographs.

"I'm sorry," she said awkwardly, as Ichigo was sitting on her bed, paused from doing homework, and staring at her in surprise. "It's just - I'm not -"

"It's fine," said Ichigo, hard to read, but her brown eyes were surprisingly understanding. Rukia returned to her room in relief, and then she heard music start to play from Ichigo's room, trailing down to Rukia's bedroom, where the door was usually kept open to give more of an idea of empty, freer space. It was a slow, sad song, and these were some of the lyrics:

 _But once you've learned to be lonely_

 _And lonely is the only thing you've known_

 _It begins to feel like home_

 _It becomes your comfort zone_

 _And once you've learned to be without someone_

 _And settle for the silence of an empty room_

 _Oh, it changes you_

 _There's a lot you have to undo_

 _Once you've learned to be lonely_

A risky move on Ichigo's part, but one that had hit Rukia to the core. She thought of her life in the Soul Society: her lack of friends, her distant noble brother, the fact that everyone else thought she was above them, her vast empty room in that vast empty compound. _Your comfort zone,_ the song had said. A human had written that, she thought, dizzy. A mere, frail, stupid human.

Later, when Ichigo was asleep, Rukia snuck inside her bedroom and took the frames back. Unbeknownst to Rukia herself, Ichigo woke up, stared at the space where the photos had been, and smiled.

Then there were the Kurosakis themselves. They were loud, enthusiastic, constantly bickering and shouting random things, sometimes teasingly violent - shoving and hitting each other. They were comfortable being nude around each other, and often the sisters took baths together like little kids. Dinners were constantly informal and enormously exciting, everyone sitting on an equal level around a round table in close quarters with each other. Karin introduced her to living world sports, and the mysterious world of "movies" and "video games" (the latter with Ichigo's help); Yuzu helped her coordinate her wardrobe; Ichigo insisted on feeding Rukia extra food ("you look like you're starving, eat up!" she said worriedly at practically every meal); their father showered her with affection in the goofiest and most grandiose manner possible. He and Ichigo had an interesting relationship - a bickering one, but there was good nature and enormous fondness there, Rukia could see it. In fact, most of family life seemed to revolve around Ichigo, because her sisters admired her so much.

There was something warm about it, being fed breakfast and then headed off to school with a "Have a good day!" amid a mess of siblings. Meeting up with and walking to school alongside Ichigo's friends. Rukia had never really experienced that before.

She told herself not to get emotionally attached. They were just humans, after all, and this was only temporary. She was just acting around them, when she smiled and acted bright and happy. Just acting.

But Ichigo and her life were, in their own way, very hard to resist.

* * *

"I can't believe they're gone." Ichigo was standing, lost, in the alleyway.

She and Rukia had spent an entire afternoon going all over Karakura, trying to find the last two ghosts Ichigo had had contact with. But they were nowhere to be found. And with no new Hollows in the area, for now, there was only one possibility.

"One of the two Hollows you destroyed probably ate them," said Rukia reservedly. She felt sympathy for Ichigo. The girl just looked so defeated. "What are you upset about? You saved them. You sent them to the place you would have had to send them to anyway."

"Yeah, I guess," said Ichigo, disappointed. "I just wish I could have spared them the pain they felt because of me."

Rukia wasn't sure what to say. "We need to start your Shinigami training," she said at last, but in the heavy silence, it felt inadequate.

Nevertheless, Ichigo nodded, somehow seeming more determined than before. "Yes," she said. "Let's begin. First things first - I want to learn _Konso_ and _Kido_."

"Shouldn't we focus on destroying Hollows first?" Rukia questioned, frowning.

"I've already killed two Hollows. Imprecisely, maybe, but still. I'm a good fighter. But I don't know anything about the other parts of being a Shinigami," said Ichigo. There was that thirst for knowledge again, a thirst that could not be quenched. "Could you teach me those?"

"... Yes," Rukia decided cautiously. "But we will need a place to practice."

* * *

So they took the bus out of the city until they finally reached open land, empty fields, a few afternoons a week. This was where Rukia taught Ichigo about her spirit energy. She would slam Ichigo's soul out of her body, leave the body off to the side, and train her in her Shinigami form out in a field.

"First things first: push some spirit energy into your zanpakutoh," Rukia said. She decided to start with _Konso_. It was, at least in theory, simpler.

But Ichigo looked bewildered. "What do you mean?" she asked. "How do I do that?"

Rukia stared. "You… you don't know how to move your spirit energy? Then how have you already defeated two Hollows?!" she asked, incredulous.

"I dunno." Ichigo shrugged, still looking at her funny.

This was incredible for Rukia. Ichigo had made it to rookie Shinigami - without ever consciously moving any of her spirit energy. This meant that: the power Rukia had sensed and seen in action so far? That was just unconscious spirit energy. Like a sink tap occasionally dripping a drop of water here or there by accident.

So what would happen if the sink were turned… on?

"Okay," said Rukia, suddenly determined. "We're going to help you feel your spirit energy." She reached out her hand and shouted, "Binding spell, the first! Sai!"

Ichigo's legs and arms sprang together and she fell over flat onto the ground.

"Now," said Rukia matter of factly, "break out of this binding spell."

Ichigo stared. "Uh… how?"

Rukia thought maybe she needed a little incentive. "Aww, stupid little Ichigo," she said, faking contempt. "Can't even get out of a stupid little binding spell." In actuality, Rukia's _Kido_ spells were not simple to get out of, even when she was weakened, but the goading was to try to get Ichigo's blood pumping. That should trigger an increase in spirit energy.

Sure enough, Ichigo flushed and her face twisted in disbelief and anger. Rukia felt a sudden increase in spiritual pressure, one that nearly sucked the breath right out of her, and then golden characters were suddenly flexing around Ichigo's form. "Ichigo, that's it!" she gasped out, brightening. "That's your spirit energy!"

Ichigo looked down in surprise. She could feel a sort of electricity coursing through her veins, all running into that center - the same place Rukia had stabbed her, the same place where the spirit that had sucked out Rukia's Shinigami powers had come from. Ichigo reached inside - and something unlocked.

There was a sudden BOOM and an explosion of power that knocked Rukia off her feet. She skidded along the ground… And looked up, gasping.

A mini crater of scorched earth surrounded Ichigo, who was now standing upright, puzzled, freed from the binding spell. Testing, she flexed her spirit energy - and Rukia choked, unable to breathe. Alarmed, Ichigo sucked up all the spirit energy again - and Rukia relaxed.

"Thank God we did this out in a field," said Rukia at last, and they both laughed weakly.

Despite her laughter, though, Rukia had noticed - Ichigo's already massive sword had become even bigger.

* * *

So that was step one. Step two was getting Ichigo to actually control the spirit energy trapped inside her. Rukia decided to start her out with the beginning step to _Kido_ \- forming a sphere of spirit energy around oneself.

And Ichigo had absolutely no success.

Basically, when it came to controlling her energy, she _sucked_. There was just too much of it. She couldn't get _anything_ to form around her - not even an uneven or incomplete sphere.

Rukia watched her, frowning, puzzled. At last, she decided to try something Shiba Kaien-dono had once taught her before his death.

"The Shiba specialize in _Kido_ ," he had said, "even though it's hard for us to master. Our unusually large spirit energy means we have had to learn shortcuts in order to master _Kido_. But once we have it mastered, we are among the greatest of them all." Then he'd grinned sheepishly. "Not to sound arrogant or dramatic or anything."

Kaien-dono had taught all those shortcuts to Rukia.

"Okay, stop," she said, putting out a hand.

Ichigo was stubborn. "I think I can keep trying -" she began.

"I did not mean stop trying to learn _Kido_ ," Rukia clarified. "I meant, stop how you're learning it. Try this. Close your eyes." Ichigo did so. "Imagine a circle. Fill in that circle with black color. Imagine yourself moving toward the circle…"

And Rukia's eyes widened as she trailed off in amazement. Ichigo's perfect sphere was growing larger and larger - it was now roughly the size of a _house_.

The typical size of a sphere like this one? The size of a tall human.

"Ichigo, stop, stop!" said Rukia in alarm as it kept growing. Ichigo opened her eyes, the spirit energy phasing out, echoing around them, rippling with power.

"Was that good?" she asked.

"... Yes," said Rukia weakly. "That was very good. Now." She suddenly became stern. "Make it smaller. The more control you have, the more of these big spells you'll be able to do."

* * *

After that came _long_ weeks of training.

Slowly, Ichigo began learning spells and mastering _Konso_. And when she did get something, she got it quickly and in a very big way. Soon enough, her _Kido_ was massively, alarmingly powerful.

Her attack explosions were huge enough to rival Kaien-dono's or a Captain's. The first time, they hadn't been expecting this. Then the explosion had begun echoing out around its place of origin and Ichigo had yelled, "RUN!" They'd both sprinted away and were lifted off the ground by the explosion, skidding, their ears ringing.

But there was more: her shields were impenetrable, her healing immediate, her binding most likely impossible to break out of even for an experienced Shinigami. She also began practicing her _Konso_ on ghosts around Tokyo - and, the usual problems Shinigami had with loosening particularly grounded souls? Ichigo barely blinked at them.

Her sword also became smaller and smaller until it was the size of a regular katana. Not because she'd lost power. But because her control had gotten better.

And, together with her expertise in kendo and karate, and her increased speed, this made her quite deadly for a rookie.

"Good job, Rukia," said Urahara, smiling, the next time she went to visit him at his shop for supplies. "Young Ichigo's progress is coming along even better than I expected."

"She is a very driven person," said Rukia reservedly, but inside she was guilty and worried. What exactly did Urahara have planned for Ichigo?

* * *

One thing Rukia learned on weekends with Ichigo was that she was fashionable.

Ichigo was tough, but no one ever forgot that she was a woman. Her bone and wood jewelry, her hair clips, her Black Opium perfume, her flame red lipstick and cocoa eyeliner, they enforced this - but so, it turned out, did her clothes. She would pair a crop top with a pencil skirt, in lovely colors of pumpkin, rust, dark peach, ivory, peach-pink, turquoise, gold, deep purple, in lovely patterns of leaves and branches, and she would leave Rukia feeling very plain and inexperienced in living world fashion indeed. She had this long camel-colored trench coat that flowed over her curves and belted at the waist, emphasizing her smaller waistline, and together with a nice pair of heels and some makeup it always made her look absolutely fabulous.

Weekends were usually times for fun. Ichigo had lots of things in her world that she wanted to show Rukia, and Rukia - who had mostly learned about the living world from books, and quickly learned from Ichigo's constant corrections that these were out of date and inadequate - was an interested student.

The city of Tokyo was an ode unto itself. Ichigo took her to sumo wrestling stables, which were bizarre and amazing - basically, big, grunting, sweating guys went at each other in the brawling-est way possible, and wrestled each other to the ground, and people paid to watch. Ichigo snickered at Rukia's expression, placed bets, and cheered in loud ways at inappropriate moments. Even her fellow Japanese stared at her.

Pachinko parlors were fun - the object of the pachinko game was, quite simply, to get as many balls as possible through a series of pins and into the center hole. Cat cafes and themed restaurants were fun as well - cat cafes being cafes where people could play with cats while sipping at their drinks (Ichigo introduced Rukia to a drink called "coffee" that made her bounce relentlessly off the walls for several hours yet apparently wasn't restricted), and themed restaurants being simply restaurants with a particular theme. Ichigo took her to several, including a jail-themed restaurant and a robot-themed restaurant with singing, dancing robots, but Ichigo's personal favorite was the Christon Cafe, which was themed like a "gothic cathedral" - a Western earthly building that was impossible to describe and had to be experienced, but had dark religious undertones.

This brought Rukia to the Harajuku district. Goth Lolitas also had dark undertones. They wore tiny black dresses and curled hair and black eye makeup and carried black parasols (Ichigo had little crystals hanging from hers). Ichigo loved visiting the Harajuku district all dressed up in this manner, but the thing about the Harajuku district was that everyone was dressed up as bizarrely as she was. It was like some sort of circus of fashion. Her friends there were all highly eccentric, squealing over how cute Rukia was and then - despite Rukia's protests - yanking her away in a great crowd and getting her all dressed up and giving her her very own "Harajuku" look. Mori girls also wore lots of makeup and a funny hairstyle, but were more into loose earthy clothes and old-age Western country girl dresses and boots. Ichigo took pictures.

Rukia wasn't sure how to feel about this. If Ichigo ever met her brother, those pictures could technically be used against her as blackmail.

Then again, if Ichigo ever met Byakuya-nii-sama, he'd probably try to kill her, so maybe there wouldn't be any room for blackmail.

Then Ichigo and her mostly-older Harajuku friends went barhopping in the Golden Gai neighborhood, dragging Rukia along with them and getting her up onstage, highly drunk, to sing some very bad karaoke at one of the bars. (Ichigo also filmed this.) After that, it was a bit of a blur. They ended up stumbling home past men lying prone, flat-out unconscious from drink, in the streets. For some reason, no one touched them. Japan was a highly wealthy country, and Ichigo explained later that it was generally understood that people like that were not to be disturbed. Tokyo expected high levels of ethics from its inhabitants, as well as high standards of cleanliness.

Rukia was afraid they made too much noise coming home late, her and Ichigo, their friends squealing goodbyes from the street, but Ichigo's father never came out to meet them. Rukia apologized to him for letting Ichigo stay out late the next day - drinking at Ichigo's age was technically illegal in Japan, and Rukia, as the older one, felt personally responsible for how the night had gone. Ichigo's father had an interesting reaction.

"I let Karin and Yuzu drink at festivals, and they're even younger," he said, shrugging. So he had known. "She's not a kid anymore. I don't control her actions. She has a good head on her shoulders and for the most part she's very responsible. Occasionally, she calls and says she'll be out late and we order takeout. It's not a big deal to me. I'm trying to encourage individualism so we can maintain a good relationship. I hope she had fun."

Ichigo also introduced her to DDR - a game called Dance Dance Revolution - which basically entailed acting like a complete spazz, and which Rukia was horrible at. And she took her to a long street of restaurants called Piss Alley, where bizarre foods like grilled salamander, snake liquor, frog sashimi, and raw pig testicles were sold at - for a Soul Society person - absurdly cheap prices.

All food was cheap in the living world, as an interesting side note. And food was _everywhere_. You could even get food at vending machines, big machines where you could slip in coins or notes and pre-packaged food was thrown out of the machine at you. Ichigo had to show her how to open and use pre-packaged food and drinks, and they got into a whole history lesson on the Industrial Revolution, a period in human history when assembly lines full of people and machines started making the same thing over and over again and selling it to the masses - and thus large "chains" of businesses had been born. You could also get a number of other things from vending machines, like condoms and hair care products, but Ichigo explained this was mostly unique to Tokyo.

The mention of condoms, of course, brought Rukia's adventures to Love Hotels. Ichigo booked them a stay for one night in a Love Hotel, and Rukia didn't understand why they were staying at a hotel until they walked into a big glowing traditional-looking palace compound like place, and paid and got a room number from a slotted little door instead of an actual person at a desk, and then entered a huge bedroom decorated with traditional shoji that included a traditional looking bridge and a vast bed for two. There was a gigantic bath in the other room.

Ichigo saw her face and burst into hysterical laughter. "Love Hotels are where people go to have kinky weird sex!" she managed through her giggles.

"I am _not_ having sex with you, Ichigo!" said Rukia in fierce, blushing alarm. She'd gone along with everything else, but this was where she drew the line.

"I know that! I'm not even a lesbian! I just wanted to see your face when I took you into a love hotel room!" Ichigo finally collapsed, overcome with laughter.

Rukia sighed. _Humans._

Then they took a bath together, onsen-style, and sat cross-legged on the vast bed as Ichigo explained in gory, enthusiastic detail all the other rooms that had been available, from boat rooms to carousel rooms to UFO rooms to Disney rooms to S&M rooms to Victorian-era rooms to under-the-sea rooms to car rooms to classrooms to - weirdly enough - rooms that looked like they were from other cities. Half of this stuff was so living world Rukia didn't even know what it _was_ , let alone why people would want to have sex in one, and then Ichigo had to explain those things to her as well. She clearly found the whole thing highly amusing.

It was all quite mystifying. Rukia asked Ichigo if sexual morals really were as loose here as she'd heard, and despite the appearance of love hotels, Ichigo insisted they weren't. While courting had evolved into dating, a sort of game where people dated around with different other people to find one they liked and then left the others perhaps with emotion but not with remorse to marry their final singular choice, sex was still for most people (like Ichigo) a highly intimate and specialized thing, and one should never hug or kiss someone they didn't know really well in Japanese public. Even holding hands in public was thought to be a bit much, at least in Japan. Dating and sexuality were considered private affairs.

"So how do people greet each other?" Rukia asked. "I heard it's by curtsying."

"Yeah, maybe over a hundred years ago," said Ichigo flatly. "You have to understand, here in the living world, a whole generation can die in a hundred years and another generation can be on their way out. Now, it's typical to shake hands or bow with someone, or to just say hello."

So sometimes, it was actually simpler than Rukia had thought it would be.

On a slightly more normal note, Rukia also joined all the clubs Ichigo had joined, because of course she had to be around Ichigo all the time to alert her about Shinigami duties. These at-school clubs included: kendo club and karate club (both of which Tatsuki had joined, and which had lots of sparring involved), feminist club and the gay-straight alliance (one's goals being to improve the standards of equality for women in the world and talk about women's reproductive health and enjoyment, the other's goals being to form a mutual air of acceptance and cooperation between heterosexual and homosexual peoples; Chizuru, a lesbian, was also a part of these clubs), and poetry class, which was actually at a level of education even higher than Ichigo's. She literally got such good grades and was such a good writer that she'd been put into an advanced poetry program.

She was also in book club with Ryou, and Ichigo really did seem to love books. She introduced Rukia to her personal favorite living world politics, philosophy, books, music, and movies (a kind of pre-recorded theater). Then there were video games, games played on electronic devices. Rukia took an especial interest in things she had never experienced before, in particular the horror genre and comics, especially in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. So Ichigo let her borrow her horror video games, Stephen King novels, comic books and manga volumes, and urban exploration videos (urban exploration being a filmed exploration of creepy abandoned hospitals and asylums, especially late at night). Almost all horror, to Rukia's fascination, featured death in the scariest manner possible - almost as if all humans had embarked on a mission to mutually terrify each other over the all-consuming idea of death. The idea of "ghosts" really was a common one, and most abandoned places were said to be haunted, even when they really weren't.

She asked Ichigo about this, and Ichigo explained, "I like seeing death played out in fiction. When it goes too far for me are with psychics and scary reality TV show hosts - people who try to make money frightening people over something that's not really there. That's where I draw the line and where it stops being enjoyable for me."

Ichigo also took Rukia rock-climbing once - there were whole buildings and organizations who built fake walls specifically dedicated to the practice, and all sorts of special equipment had been made specifically for rock climbing.

One of the biggest and most amazingly welcoming things Ichigo did for Rukia, though, was immediately let her into her circle of friends.

Ichigo's friends group at school really occupied two places during lunch. Sometimes they sat underneath a tree by the baseball field, and sometimes they sat on the flat school roof. Either way, Rukia was introduced to everyone in the big rowdy group, and they all sat in a giant circle, eating, talking, and joking. Rukia was shy at first, which was true of her but also projected the kind of image she was trying to project, but Ichigo's enthusiastic friends wouldn't let her get away with that and tried to include her by asking her questions about herself. Yet they always evaded questions about her family quite neatly, only asking Rukia questions in what they considered "safe" territory. The girls (mainly the gossip Mahana) tried to set her up on dates with several boys, despite her protests, and the boys flirted with her relentlessly - embarrassingly, Ichigo had to tell Rukia that was what they were doing.

Mizuiro was the best flirt. By far. Chad was too quiet, and Keigo too loud and perverted, but Mizuiro could make you think you were the loveliest person in the room. Ichigo said this was a ploy of Mizuiro's, one that usually worked like a charm with older women.

"Mizuiro's one of those modern daters who ain't looking to settle down and get married," said Ichigo bluntly. "He just likes the feeling of being in a relationship, especially a sexual one. Don't be with him if you're looking long-term."

"Of - of course not - I never would -" Rukia sputtered, red-faced.

Ichigo smirked. "Relax, Rukia," she said. "You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with."

They also hung out with Ichigo's friends outside of school.

Tatsuki and Orihime seemed to be Ichigo's closest friends. Ichigo's Dad called them "The Terrible Threesome." Tatsuki and Ichigo had met in karate class as kids - each had been the other's first friend, being the only two girls in the class - and then later they'd befriended Orihime, who was being bullied, and had taught her self-defense. Tatsuki, Orihime, and Ichigo took Rukia out shopping with them, counseling her in the art of fashion - made more complex by the fact that they all had a different fashion sense, with Tatsuki liking shorts and cargo pants and Orihime liking long Asian and flower print skirts - and sometimes they all met up in one girl's kitchen and cooked and baked sweets together. (Orihime had the _bizarrest_ taste in food and the biggest sweet tooth. Tatsuki loved apple pie. Ichigo loved seafood and spicy food and chocolate desserts - including chocolate jalapeno milkshakes. They collectively introduced Rukia to pickle-and-mayo sandwiches, which were delicious.)

And sometimes Ichigo just hung out with one girl or the other. She sparred a lot and traded manga comics with Tatsuki, for example, and sometimes they went to the arcade (a big shop full of electronic games to play) together, whereas she preferred snacking and watching stand-up comedy in front of the TV with Orihime, who had a great sense of humor and was a consummate daydreamer. (Seemingly an airhead, she opened her mouth and stared off into space a lot - but she had these surprising moments of great insight.)

Of course, Orihime and Tatsuki weren't Ichigo's only friends. Chad was in a rock band, and when they went to one of his band's local concerts Rukia was introduced to her first rock concert, which was tremendously noisy and full of standing, dancing, jumping people and flashing lights. The band members just sort of went nuts with their instruments on stage, and then Ichigo was invited up to play guitar and sing with them, and with her tough black outfit and stiletto heels she fit right in, banging right along with them. She sang two numbers, Paramore's "Ignorance" and Gin Wigmore's "Man Like That", both furious dance numbers, and as she strutted around arrogantly on the stage she seemed somehow overtly sexual in a way even Ichigo usually wasn't.

By the end of the concert, even Rukia had gotten the hang of it and was dancing around, having the time of her life. Living world concerts were fun! She felt brave enough to put her hands to her mouth and whoop, clapping, at the end, and a glowing, sweating Ichigo and her friends grinned and slapped Rukia on the back.

Ryou, on the other hand, was a track star. That meant she was in a whole club solely dedicated to people running really fast. They visited the school's baseball stands to watch one of Ryou's "track meets", which consisted of Ryou and others racing each other around the field, leaping over various obstacles put in place specifically to hamper them. Ryou was actually almost as scary as Tatsuki and Ichigo, in her own way - she was an honor student who served as class president.

Michiru, rather shy at first, was the one Rukia had gotten to know least, so one day she sat down next to Michiru and they bonded over a shared love of bunnies, stuffed animals, and arts and crafts. _Finally,_ Rukia thought, _someone who gets it!_

And she didn't even realize how warmly and enthusiastically she was talking with a human.

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_ Some of this stuff I just knew about Tokyo/Japan. Other stuff I had to look up. I tried putting up links to my research, but FF won't let me.

A lot of this stuff, though, I just know from doing a lot of research over the years into Japan. Some of it, you're going to have to take my word on.

The song Ichigo played for Rukia is Reba McEntire's "Once You've Learned to Be Lonely." I think it can apply to a depressing number of highly-ranked members of the Gotei 13, both former and current. This probably won't be the last time you hear me say this, but even if you're not into country, I'd recommend checking the song out. It's one of those beautiful little gems you sometimes find amid the mass of country music.

A side note - putting lyrics and poetry into my stories is an artistic choice for me. My hope is that you go look up the songs, artists, poems, and poets, and thus get a better understanding of the situation or character. I realize this style does not appeal to everybody but music and poetry is such an intrinsic part of my being and my writing process that it would feel wrong if I didn't include such things in my writing. I've also seen people complain about me mentioning real life celebrities in my story, and my response to that would be: Guess what? Occasionally Kubo does that.


	4. If You Could See Me Now

**Chapter Four: If You Could See Me Now**

At about eleven in the evening on a Saturday night, Orihime got a sudden craving for juice.

She got these sudden cravings from time to time. Pastries with ketchup. Vegetables with tofu and peanut butter. The way Tatsuki and Ichigo sometimes put it, "Orihime is basically a pregnant woman on a 24-hour, 365-day basis."

This time, she wanted juice. Luckily, there was a corner store across the street that was open all night, and it carried hot chocolate, coffee, and juice.

So Orihime left her single apartment to walk across the street to the corner store. Others might have been afraid to walk in the city at night at a late hour, but Orihime, somewhat foolhardy, always thought the best of everyone and so wasn't especially afraid. In fact, she was singing a little jingle softly under her breath to herself, smiling, as she went across the road to the corner store.

She bought her juice, stopped outside the corner store, and took a sip. Mmm. Craving satisfied.

She screwed the lid back on, put the juice back in her shopping bag, went to cross the street again, still singing - and heard a screech of tires. She whirled around, panic filling her like the headlights filled her vision - a car that hadn't seen her in the darkness until it was too late.

* * *

It was a Sunday morning and Ichigo was out with Rukia, as per usual. But this time they were alone, and working on Shinigami training. Rukia insisted it was time to put the focus back on fighting Hollows.

"You've been fighting them very clumsily," she said firmly. "You need to know how to defend yourself against them. But first, a review of what you've already learned."

So they went back to Yumizawa at noon after brunch with Ichigo's family, and found the ghost of the little boy playing on the merry-go-round. He stopped and stared up at them as they approached, Ichigo in her Shinigami form, having been released by Rukia's glove.

Ichigo knelt down to his level. "Hey," she said quietly.

"You're the one who saved me that day," the boy observed.

"Yeah. But unless I send you on to the next life, more of those monsters will keep coming after you. You don't want that, do you?" The little boy shook his head.

"But… I don't want to leave my family," he said hesitantly.

"I know how you feel. When my mother died, I didn't want to lose her either," said Ichigo sympathetically. "But sometimes things just work out that way, I guess. I have to send you on, kid. You don't belong here anymore."

The little boy nodded. "... I'm scared," he admitted.

"Don't be," said Ichigo. "You're going to a good place. Trust me on this one, alright?"

The little boy nodded. She put the hilt of her blade to his forehead, shot spirit energy through it in a tightly controlled burst, and removed the hilt. A glowing blue "RELEASED" stamp appeared in its place. Then the little boy slowly dissolved in blue and his soul became a little blue dot. A black Hell butterfly appeared, carrying him up past the playground and into the beyond.

Ichigo stared upward quietly for a moment.

Then she stood, business-like, and turned to Rukia. "Well," she said bluntly, "do I pass?"

"You do. Very good," said Rukia, offering one of her small, rare smiles. "Now show me some incantations and hand gestures for a few different kido spells. Don't actually do them. No need to alarm any Tokyo citizens."

"Bakudo one! Sai!"

"And its effect?"

"To bind the arms and legs. Bakudo 58! Kakushi!"

"And its effect?"

"To trace the target's location. Bakudo 77! Tentei!"

"And its effect?"

"It transmits the user's voice to several people at the same time. Hado 31! Shakkaho!"

"And its effect?"

"It sends a fire-type attack from the user's arms. Additionally, Hado 33 releases blue flames, and Hado 63 sends an electrical attack."

"Show me one more."

"Hakufuku! It clouds the consciousness of the target."

"Excellent. Now, for your real training for today, let's go to a larger and emptier park." Rukia looked around at the park, which was slowly filling with children and parents. "What I have in mind for you requires more space." She put Ichigo back in her body with her glove and they set off.

"Couldn't we have just gone outside the city like we usually do?" Ichigo asked as they began walking to Karuizawa.

"It is not necessary," said Rukia, shrugging. "You will be hitting baseballs."

Ichigo stopped and stared at her in bewilderment. "Hitting baseballs? And what's wrong with how I've been killing Hollows so far?"

"Your hand to hand and swordsmanship are both excellent, and with kido you are even stronger. For a rookie, you also have a nice speed, borne by your large energy and good control. Your problem is that you do not understand the essence of Hollow hunting technique."

"Which is?" said Ichigo, raising an eyebrow, challenging.

"To hit the Hollow through the head with the zanpakutoh in one clean stroke. Preferably from behind, although this isn't always possible."

"Why from behind?"

But Rukia began speaking loudly to the air, ignoring her. "Now let's go to the park, Ichigo, and get you all set up with your training!"

Ichigo scowled, but followed her.

There at the park, dark green with lots of little picnic tables and a vast field beyond, Rukia unveiled a pitching machine filled with baseballs. "I drew on them!" she said proudly. "Some have heads, some have hands. The ones with hands explode with pepper when you hit them. Your job is to hit only the heads. To cement the idea in your mind." Smugly, she held out a drawn-on baseball.

Ichigo felt dread curl in the pit of her stomach. "How do you even know about baseball?" she asked, bewildered.

"We have many basic sports, just like you," said Rukia. "Baseball. Soccer. It's those other, obscure ones like jai alai that I don't understand." Here, she looked bewildered.

"Do you have games, too?"

"Of course. Just not electronic ones."

"Okay. Rukia," said Ichigo at last, pained, getting to her real point. "How am I going to tell the difference between heads and hands while they're being pitched at me? The differences… aren't very distinct… from a distance." Here, she was trying to be delicate. Rukia, she had noticed, was not precisely a good artist, though she was quite an enthusiastic one. Her heads and hands just looked like masses of scribbles, even close-up.

"Well, how else do you expect to differentiate between them?" said Rukia crossly.

"You could draw on them in blue or red, and then throw them to me," Ichigo suggested. It was a compromise - Rukia could still draw, but Ichigo would be able to tell which was which.

So that was what they did, out in the field, their hair up in ponytails, with Rukia pitching to Ichigo and Ichigo only hitting the "head" balls. (There was a sexual joke somewhere in there, but Ichigo decided not to go for it.)

While they were pitching and hitting, Rukia said, "... Ichigo? I have something else to ask about the living world."

"Sure, go for it."

"Can you explain religion to me?"

Ichigo thought for a while, frowning. "Religion is humans not knowing what's coming, or why things happen the way they do. So they make stuff up and act according to that. It's also sort of a social controller, I guess - people will say, for example, that an all-powerful God will punish you in the afterlife if you steal or act envious, and so others have incentive not to do that. For a long time, Christianity, for example, said that homosexuality was a sin - probably because centuries ago, when Christianity was originally formed, they needed as many new Christians as possible and heterosexual sex was the only way for that to happen. The problem is, some modern day humans still insist on following those teachings to the letter."

"You don't sound like you're a big fan of it," Rukia noted.

"I guess I'm not being fair," Ichigo admitted. "Religion can also be a catalyst for good things. Going to a religious house once a week amid lots of other people can make you lots of friends and give you a good support group. And most religions support positive things like charity. I just don't believe in any sort of religion myself.

"And, we're done," she said proudly, sticking her baseball bat down like a flag and wiping the sweat from her brow. All hundred balls were finished.

"Ichigo-chan! Rukia!" They looked around. Orihime was waving to them from above at the edge of the park (which was in a kind of hollow). Orihime ran down the steps toward them and past the picnic tables, carrying grocery bags. "Playing baseball?" she asked, smiling.

"We're practicing our technique," Ichigo lied easily, shrugging. "What are you up to?"

"I just came back from shopping for dinner," said Orihime cheerfully, holding up her bags. "I bought leeks, butter, bananas, and bean jam jelly!"

"Of course you did," said Rukia and Ichigo dryly as one. "Should I even ask what you're making?" Rukia added.

"Leek and butter sandwiches, and banana splits topped with bean jam jelly! It's one of my favorites." Orihime rocked a little on her feet, smiling.

Ichigo noticed a bandage wrapped around Orihime's upper arm, half hidden by her top's short sleeve. "Your arm," she said curiously, pointing. "What happened? Did you fall - again?"

"Or trip over air?" Rukia added.

"Or run into a wall daydreaming?" Ichigo guessed.

"Or forget to tie your shoelaces?" Rukia said.

"Or -"

"Oh, you guys are so mean, I didn't do any of those things!" Orihime scowled, pouting. Ichigo and Rukia snickered. Orihime was extremely clumsy and she got into some sort of injury practically every day.

"This time," Ichigo interpreted.

"For your information, I was run over by a car," said Orihime stiffly.

And Ichigo freaked the fuck out. "Run over by a car! Holy shit, why aren't you in the hospital?!"

"Well, they just bumped me. And then drove off."

"They didn't even _stop_?!"

"Uh-oh. You look angry."

"I _am_ angry! Why aren't _you_ angry?!"

"That's what all my other friends have been saying, too. But the driver didn't do it on purpose."

"Orihime, he hit you and then drove off! Do I need to take you to my Dad?"

"Nope. I'm tough. It was just a little knock," Orihime insisted stubbornly. But Rukia had bent down to examine a huge, black and blue bruise on Orihime's leg. It looked like something had recently torn her leg to shreds. Even Rukia looked serious.

"Yeah, I got it last night," said Orihime in response to Rukia's intent stare. "That must have happened when the car hit me, too."

"That looks nasty," said Ichigo sympathetically. Her face darkened. "I'm going to track down that driver and then kill him. Assuming it's a him. I guess it could be a woman."

Orihime smiled, amused. "You can join Tatsuki-chan. That's what she said. Oh! By the way." She jumped on her feet and looked from Ichigo to Rukia excitedly. "I'm glad I came across you guys, because I wanted to invite you! Michiru, Mahana, Chizuru, Ryou, and Tatsuki are all coming over to my place tonight - for a sleepover! You guys should come, too."

Rukia looked bewildered, so Ichigo said in amusement, "We'd love to."

"Yay! See you at my place tonight!" Orihime hurried away.

"Yes, see you at your place!" Rukia called enthusiastically after Orihime. She had her own reasons for wanting to be closer to Orihime for the next few days, if that bruised claw-mark was any indication, but she wasn't about to tell anybody else that. Instead, she turned to Ichigo and asked, "What's a sleepover?"

"A bunch of girls get together at somebody's house and stay up all night doing each other's hair, playing Truth or Dare, telling scary stories, eating snacks…" Ichigo shrugged. "Everyone brings pajamas, slippers, and sleeping bags and has a good time of it. It can be fun. No one really gets any sleep, though."

"So Orihime's family is okay with this?"

"Ah. Orihime lives alone. The only one of us that does."

"Yes, I've noticed her apartment is always empty…" Rukia was carefully casual, fishing for information.

"Yeah, she had an older brother who raised her, but he died. A few years ago."

That was what Rukia had been looking for. "What happened?"

"Well, I never really knew him, but I remember because it happened at our clinic. This was back before Tatsuki and I had met Orihime. I had been just about to leave for school. The doorbell rang before we were open. I opened the door. A girl came in carrying her older brother on her back. They said it was a car accident. He was covered in blood. We didn't have the equipment to save him. He died before we could transfer him to the big local hospital, Karakura General. My Dad knows the hospital director, Ishida Ryuuken, but they're not on great terms. I guess that day Ishida-san didn't feel like being particularly cooperative. Anyway…

"I do remember that little girl crying a lot that day. Well, later, I saw her again in middle school, being bullied by some girls. I told Tatsuki we had to save her. We beat up the girls, taking them on one by one, and then we let Orihime sit with us at lunch that day. We've been friends ever since. I wasn't sure if Orihime would remember me, but it turned out she did. She said that hair was hard to forget. And, of all things? She thanked me and my family for trying to save her brother - even though it didn't work.

"Why all the questions?" Ichigo added curiously.

Rukia waved her hand and walked away. "No reason. Come on. We're going home too."

"No more training?" said Ichigo, surprised.

"No. We have to prepare for our big night out." Rukia smiled.

Ichigo shrugged. "I suppose," she said, and began walking alongside Rukia back toward the Kurosaki home. "You know," she said casually after a while, "I'm eventually going to find out why you have to attack Hollows from behind. And why you're so interested in Orihime and her bruise."

Rukia's eyes darkened, but she said nothing.

* * *

After setting up their sleeping bags in the middle of the living room floor and getting into their PJs, the girls did indeed play Truth or Dare that night. Rukia always took the dares because there were too many truths she couldn't talk about. Ichigo always took the dares because fuck dares.

This led to Ichigo and Rukia running in nothing but their underwear down Orihime's darkened street very late that night.

 _Oh if Byakuya-nii-sama could see me now,_ Rukia thought. She had basically accepted, by this point, her complete degeneration. Degeneration and trouble, she'd found out, could actually be kind of fun.

They went, flushed, back up to the apartment, the other girls whooping and hollering, Ichigo grinning. Chizuru pointed out that pretty much nothing could top Kuchiki Rukia running around in her underwear on a late-night city street, so after that, they just sat around doing their nails and talking about guys.

Ichigo chose chocolate scented nail polish, Rukia raspberry red. Then Chizuru did their nails up in fancy Japanese nail art - and she didn't even try to feel up Ichigo while she was doing it, which Ichigo thought was quite impressive. Michiru did one half of the room's nails while Chizuru did the other; they were the nail art queens.

"That guy's hot."

"Yeah, maybe for Antarctica."

"He is _not_ hot."

"His girlfriend is, though." Chizuru grinned.

"In a distant, aesthetic sort of way, I actually agree," said Ryou thoughtfully.

Just then, Rukia's "phone" buzzed. She pulled it out.

"There she is, checking that all important text," Tatsuki teased.

"Shut up," said Rukia, but she was smiling.

Ichigo was the only one who knew that wasn't a text. That sounded suspiciously like a Hollow alert. It was confirmed when Rukia's eyes widened.

"EVERYBODY DUCK!" she cried out, and just as they did, a Hollow's hand smashed through the wall to the outside, clawing at the space where they had been. All the girls screamed.

"What's going on?!"

"What was that?!"

No one but Ichigo and Rukia could see the Hollow. So Rukia pulled on her glove, slammed Ichigo's soul out of her body; Ichigo jumped out into the hole outside, Rukia clinging attached to her back in a piggyback ride. Ichigo pushed the Hollow away in one wide sword-sweep, and then they were floating above the road, across from each other.

By this time, all the other girls had sat up.

"Ichigo! Ichigo!" Tatsuki and Orihime shook Ichigo's unconscious body. "She's not responsive."

"What do we do?!"

"Where's Rukia?!"

Rukia was murmuring in Ichigo's ear. "Aim for the head," she said.

Ichigo swung her sword out, and hit the Hollow's mask - hard enough to make a crack, but not hard enough to make a killing blow.

"Too shallow!" Rukia hissed - and then she froze.

A piece of the Hollow's mask had fallen, and there was a human face behind it. The face of Orihime's brother. Ichigo paused, stunned.

Then the Hollow spit acid at her hand, she shrieked and dropped her sword, its spiky tail swung out at her, and she and Rukia fell to the waiting street below.

* * *

The girls inside the apartment were just considering calling the police or an ambulance when something seemed to toss Orihime across the room too. The girls cried out and hurried over to her - she, too, was unresponsive.

"What the hell's happeni -?" Tatsuki suddenly started choking. It was like a giant, invisible hand had slammed her against the wall and wrapped around her throat.

"Tatsuki!" Chizuru and Ryou hurried over and began kicking at the thing they felt holding Tatsuki in place. "Let her go -!"

They were swiped away.

* * *

Ichigo had wrapped her arms around Rukia and let her own body be Rukia's cushion right before she'd hit the ground and blacked out. Rukia was now shaking Ichigo's unconscious Shinigami form. "Ichigo! Ichigo!"

Ichigo at last groaned and her eyes fluttered open. "... Rukia?"

"You idiot! How could you have let it knock you out?!" Rukia demanded. "You're an expert in kendo! You should never have only cracked its mask!"

"Rukia, kendo was meant for humans. If you cracked a human's head open, that would be enough to kill it." Ichigo clutched her pounding head, sitting upright. Her hands were burned, her back hurt, and her arm, side, and face were bleeding. Not good. "It'll take some practice to get that whole 'slice through the head' thing. Then I saw Inoue Sora's face and I just -" She paused, looking around with narrowed eyes at Rukia. "Why did I see Inoue Sora's face underneath that Hollow mask?" she asked suddenly.

Rukia sighed, looking down. "Because Hollows once used to be Plus souls," she admitted at last. "The Plus souls are left for too long without a world. They lose their heart and become Hollows. The emptiness represents their depression, their lack of home. And no matter what Hollow we're talking about, they always eat their family first - the people who they feel left them behind.

" _That's_ why Shinigami attack from behind through the head. So we never learn the Hollow's human identity.

"That claw mark on Orihime's leg was the mark of a Hollow. More than likely, it either pushed her into the car or pushed the car into her, hoping to kill her.

"What I'm saying is this: Orihime's brother's soul has become a monster and is trying to kill her."

* * *

Mahana and Michiru had cried out and run over to the fallen Chizuru and Ryou. Then they felt themselves picked up in a giant hand, and dropped, painfully, with cracks, back onto the ground. The only good part? They had made the Hollow let go of Tatsuki, who was now breathing deeply, slumping and drooling, bruises around her neck.

Orihime's soul, a chain hanging from its chest, ran out to stand with her arms outstretched in front of the Hollow. "Stop hurting my friends!" she said, determined. The monster was giant, but so was Orihime's resolve. This was how it had always been, in daydreams.

"I'm just trying to exact my dues, Orihime," the Hollow hissed, maddened.

Orihime paused. "How… do you know… my name?"

"... Have you really forgotten my voice?" the Hollow asked quietly, disbelieving. But just then, a wounded Ichigo sprinted in between Orihime and the Hollow.

"Time to stop, big guy." She held up her sword. "Think about what you're doing. She's your sister. Remember? Your sister."

"Ichigo? That's my… brother?" Orihime asked softly, disbelieving.

Ichigo whirled around. "She can see me?" She saw Orihime's spirit form, the chain hanging from it. _"Is she dea -?!"_

"No!" Rukia sprinted in between them. "Focus on the Hollow!" She picked up Orihime's soul body, swung it over her shoulder, and carried it back to Orihime's physical body. The chain was still attached to its original form, and Rukia just fit the soul right back in the body it was supposed to be in.

Orihime sat up - and gasped. "I can still see the monster," she whispered. "It really isn't a dream."

Girls all over the room were now sitting up - and gasping. They could see the Hollow, too. Rukia went to each of them individually, and began healing them with flashes of blue that they could _also_ see.

"What the fuck's going on?" Tatsuki whispered incredulously.

"Ichigo, what did you mean when you said the monster is my brother?!" Orihime insisted, distraught.

"You _have_ forgotten my voice… THAT WOUNDS ME, ORIHIME!" The Hollow charged for Orihime, and Ichigo ran to block and cut at it. It blocked _her_ sword with its scaly tail and tried to push her away with it. She gritted her teeth and held on, her spiritual pressure greater than the Hollow's.

Finally, she cut right through the tail in a mess of blood and gore, and charged straight for the Hollow's head. Several girls screamed.

Sora's Hollow spat acid again at Ichigo, but this time Ichigo was ready. She put out a hand and shouted a spell, and the acid burned away in a burst of fire.

The Hollow was blinded momentarily by the light, giving Ichigo time to leap downward and cut through its head in one clear slice. The Hollow dissipated in a screech, and was gone.

"... Dead souls who remain behind as ghosts often feel forgotten by the ones they stay behind _for_ ," said Rukia matter-of-factly, looking downward, still using her healing kido. "That is when they turn monster, and become Hollows. Your brother raised you, stayed behind to protect you, yet I assume you recovered - and, in his mind, began ignoring him."

"But… but no, that's not it," Orihime whispered. "I mean - it's true that I began speaking to his shrine about my friends in school, instead of about my time with him. And it's true that I stopped praying to him. But I wanted him to see all the _good_ things that were happening in my life. I wanted him to see… that he didn't have to stay behind if he didn't want to." She put a hand to her mouth, tears in her eyes. "He's why I wear these star hair barrettes. They were my last gift from him. We got into an argument because I thought they were childish, and he left for work, and - and then he died."

"In his mind, he probably knew that, rationally," said Ichigo quietly. "His emotions just didn't want to accept it. You know. That you had made friends and learned to take care of yourself and were moving on." She had now put her hand over her own wounds, and begun healing them. "I can't believe I destroyed him," she muttered guiltily.

"Do not worry," said Rukia, all-business, still looking downward. "The zanpakutoh cleanses Hollows of their past griefs and sins as a monster, and allows them to pass on into the next life as normal. He's up in the Soul Society right now, perfectly normal and probably quite guilty.

"He couldn't help becoming a monster," she added. "That's the main thing."

"Weird… So what the hell's going on -?" Chizuru began. And then the timed pins Rukia had put covertly on each girl's shirt activated and they collapsed, unconscious, in puffs of smoke.

"What the hell did you do?!" Ichigo yelped, freaking out.

"I wiped their memories and replaced them with fake ones," said Rukia. "I don't know what their imaginations will conjure up… The memories can be a bit random. You'll see what I mean tomorrow."

* * *

The next morning at school, all the girls were raving about how a yakuza gunman had totally blasted a huge hole in Orihime's apartment wall at the sleepover last night!

"Just smile and nod," Rukia told Ichigo through gritted teeth, beaming. "Smile and nod."

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_ With all her increased training, I didn't think Ichigo would let herself get beat around by Sora, so sorry for the briefer fight scenes. I did as much fighting and action as I thought would be realistic.

Obviously, because of this, I had to do something different with the emotional moments in the chapter as well.

Oh, and did you catch it? All their girl friends also saw the Hollow by the end of the chapter! And Rukia feels more accepted by the human world already, while Ichigo still needs her help! How will this change the future…?


	5. Note

Note:

I have not abandoned this story, but I am rewriting it. Look for "Strawberry Remix" on my author's profile. I have posted the first chapter of this rewrite for all to see.


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